Born:
Glendale, California
1948


Master of Fine Arts
Califronia State University, Northridge
1973


SOLO EXHIBITIONS

1975
Nicholas Wilder Gallery
Los Angeles

1976
Claire Copley Gallery
Los Angeles

1978
Mount St. Mary's College Fine Arts Gallery
Los angeles

1980
Roy Boyd Gallery
Chicago

1981
Simard/Weber Gallery
Los Angeles

1981
Hunsaker/Schlesinger Gallery
Los Angeles

1982
Roy Boyd Gallery
Los Angeles and Chicago


SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS

1975
Nicholas Wilder Gallery
Los Angeles

1975
"Current Concerns, Part 2"
Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art

1975
Broxton Gallery
Los Angeles

1975
"Pasadena in Los Angeles"
California State University
Los Angeles

1977
"100 Plus"
Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art

1977
Art Rental Gallery
Newport Harbor Art Museum
Newport Beach, CA

1977
"We All Were Here"
California State University
Northridge, CA

1978
"Patterns, Structures, Grids"
California State University
San Bernardino, CA

1978
"100 Plus: Current Directions in Southern California Art"
Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art

1978
"Exhibition '76/'77"
Advisory Council for the Arts
Cedars-Sinai Medical Center
Los Angeles

1979
Recent Los Angeles Painting"
Lang Art Gallery
Scripps College
Claremont, CA

1979
"Abspects of Abstract: Recent West Coast Abstract Painting and Sculpture"
Crocker Art Museum
Sacramento, CA

1979
"Selections from the Frederick Weisman Company Collection of Southern California Art"
Corcoran Gallery of Art
Washington D.C.

1980
"Selections from the Frederick Weisman Company Collection of Southern California Art"
Albequerque Museum
Albequerque, NM

1981
"Los Angeles Painting: The Decade"
Art Center College of Design
Pasadena, CA

1981
"Painters"
California State University
Diminquez Hills
Carson, CA

"Decorative and Pattern Painting"
Security Pacific Plaza
Los Angeles

1981
"Professors' Choice"
Montgomery Gallery
Pomona College
Claremont, CA

1981
"Three Painter from Los Angeles"
D.B.R. Gallery
Cleveland, OH

1982
"Roy Boyd Gallery at the Merwin"
Wesleyan University
Bloomington, IL

1982
"Drawings by Paintesr"
Long Beach Museum of Art
Long Beach, CA

1982
"35 Los Angeles Artists"
Nagoya City Museum
Nagoya, Japan

1982
"Fresh Paint: 15 California Painter"
San Francisco Museum of Contemporary Art
San Francisco

1983
"Science and Prophecy"
White Columns
New York City

1984
"Contemporary Classicism"
California State University,
Los Angeles


BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ballatore, Sandy
"Expanding The Decorative"
Images & Issues
Vol. 2, No. 1, Summer 1981,
pp.66-71

Ibid, "Los Angeles: Don Sorenson at Copley and Wilder"
Art in America
Vol. 64, No. 5, September 1976,
p. 115

Gardner, Colin
"Don Sorenson"
Images & Issues
Vo. 4, No. 3, Nov/Dec 1983,
pp. 26-27

Knight, Christopher
"Los Angeles Reviews"
Artforum
Vo. 26, No. 4, Dec. 1979,
p. 80

Muchnic, Suzanne
"Los Angeles Artists' Group Show"
Artweek
Vol. 7, No. 34
October 4, 1976

Ibid. "Torchbearer On a ZigZag Course,"
Los Angeles Times
November 17, 1978

Pincus, Robert L.
"From Pattern to Imagery in Paint"
Los Angeles Times
August 25, 1981

Rosenthal, Adrienne
"Painting Dualities"
Artweek
Vol. 12, No. 16
November 25, 1978

Rubin, David
"Don Sorenson
Arts Magazine
February, 1979

Ibid, "Present Day Visionaries"
Artweek
Vol. 12, No. 16
April 25, 1981
pp. 5-6

Wilson, William
"Art Walk"
Los Angeles Times
January 24, 1975

Wilson, William
"Art Walk"
Los Angeles Times
June 18, 1976

Wilson, William
"The Galleries"
Los Angeles Times
April, 1981

Wilson, William
"The Galleries"
Los Angeles Times
October 12, 1981

Wortz, Melinda
"Wall Propinquities"
Artweek
Vol. 5, No. 6
February 9, 1974, p. 3

Ibid, "Don Sorenson Paintings 1976-1978"
Jim Murray, Editor
Mount St. Mary's College
Los Angeles, 1978

Ibid, "Don Sorenson"
Art News
Volume 82, No. 2
February, 1983


AWARDS

National Endowment for the Arts grant, 1980

Young Talent Award
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1984

 

 


The Artist, 1977

from the Introduction of the catalog
to the solo retrospective show at
Mount St. Mary's College, Los Angeles, 1978

by Melinda Wortz

Don Sorenson completed graduate school in 1973, a time when Modernist rhetoric was losing favor and with it abstract painting. In spite of art school pressures toward narrative, conceptual and installation art, filtered down from the New York press, Sorensen remained firmly committed to painting, a stance supported by one of his professors, Peter Plagens. In his very literate graduate thesis written in 1973 in defense of painting, Sorenson stated
What is needed now is a new structure— one that goes beyond the ninety degree, vertical and horizontal grid. Our modernist epic is drawing to a close, another structure is being formed, and it appears we are on the threshold of the new.

Sorenson was referring here to ideas outlined in George Kubler's book, The Shape of Time. The young artist's search for a continuatively viable vocabulary for painting has from the beginning incorporated the structural format of Modernism— a grid structure and geometric form— only to be subverted by gestural layering, splattering and idiosyncratic coloration. With this painterly style Sorenson deliberately creates spatial illusions that are antithetical to the modernist dictum of truth to the flatness of the picture plane.

It is important for understanding his work to know the two basic parameters— form and content— which inform his pursuit of a new structure. Formally, the paintings are amalgams of the polar opposites with which large stylistic swings in the history of art have been described: intellect and emotion, order and randomness, control and accident, structure and chaos, straight line and amorphous color, gloss and matte, literal flatness and illusionistic depth, figure and ground and so forth. It is through a synthesis of art history's past that Sorenson finds his unique place in that history.

With regard to content, Sorenson involves himself with painting because of its potential for spiritual metaphor. In this regard he recalls Agnes Martin's lecture at the Pasadena Art Museum in the early 1970's as a pivotal influence, together with his art historical study of writings by 20th century painters like Kandinsky, Mal evich and Mondrian. Raised in a strict Lutheran family, Sorenson had experienced ecstatic religious visions when he was a student and more recently when practicing Zen meditation. "If I weren't an artist I would probably be a monk," he says. However, having opted to "stay in the world," he finds in painting an ecstatic and visionary activity which which hints at, but is different from, his other spiritual activities. Recently the specific spiritual metaphor comes from Buddhist philosophy, particularly the unification of opposites which lies beyond dualistic thinking.

Although Sorenson's intense involvement with the act of painting is far removed from the analytic and intellectual approach of minimal painters in the 1960's, it is hardly the case that his painting is all passion and no control. On the contrary, his work is highly ordered and structured. These characteristics are not necessarily visible in the paintings, however, because the artist's system is so complex that it serves ultimately to deny itself. The three series in this exhibition have been completed in the last two years, 1976-78, The earliest "gestural" series contains zig zag motifs and curves the diagonal lines, and two densely brushed and dripped, intertwined backgrounds. In the next "curved line" series Sorenson simplifies the background by eliminating the double-layered gestures and drips, retains the zig zags and curves the diagonal lines. In the most recent "zig zag" group of painting the background remains simple and monochromatic and the diagonal lines are eliminated, so that the sets of diagonally opposed zig zags are the only remaining imagery.

It is tempting to see this progression of three series as a process of simplification, as one more element is removed with each group. However other factors are added as well. The curge of diagonals in the middle series is a new component which creates visual complexity. In the recent series the zig zags are presented in groups of thick and thin lines rather than singly. Thus it becomes difficult to say whether the newest series is simpler or more complex than the earlier ones. This condition is allied with the artist's philosophical belief, derived from Buddhism, that enough complexity ultimately resolves into simplicity, that beyond the constructions of dualistic thing they become one in the same.

Since it is virtually impossible to discern in the finished product the artist's systematic process, it is instructive to indicate it here, especially for the many viewers who tend to see Sorenson's painting as chaotic, rather than an amalgam of structure and intuition. Each painting in the gestural series represented here begins with the application of a dark toned— black or blue— monochromatic but multi-valued and highly modulated background. The second steps involves taping and painting a series of diagonal lines, executed in a number of idiosyncratic colors of roughly alternating warm and cool hues. Thirdly a set of zig zag motifs, alternating thick and thin lines and warm and cool colors, are taped and intertwined with each other and with the first applied diagonal lines. At this point, exactly half way through the painting's completion, a brushy, dripped, splattered swirl of painterly texture twists and writhes it way in and out of the more orderly taped motifs. Even the taped lines, however, are not completely regular, for their bleeding edges are important aspects of Sorenson's painting. In fact each line contains two and often more layers of different colors, so that the underlying hues seep through at the taped edges. Here at the halfway point Sorenson has utilized six color for the first layer of diagonal lines. In the color reproduction these are ivory, teal blue, beige, crimson, green-gold and pale pink. Seven colors comprise the first set of zig-zags— red, red-purple, sea green, turquoise, light green, peach and gold; and four colors make up the gestural brushed areas— blue-black, pink, dark blue and white. Altogether the first half of the painting contains nineteen colors including the background, but not including the several layers of each individual taped line. Additional visual complexity comes from the artist's alternation of matte and glossy surfaces which variably discernable as a function of our angle of viewing and the ambient light.

Sorenson's conceptual division of these paintings into two distinct halves derives from his earlier work which utilized a collage of geometric shape literally cut up and intertwined with its background. At this point Sorenson feels that he does not need the collage, but that illusion— anathema to Modernism but raison d' etre for much of Western painting— will do just as well. As layers are added to the painting all the underlying sections are taped, as well as the new lines being applied, so that the strong illusion of complexly intertwined forms is developed, and figure/ground distinctions are nearly obliterated.

Step five, following the four-color gestures, is another row of diagonals (rust, dark blue, green, gold, dusty pink and beige), followed by three zig-zags, yellow-green, red-orange and purple. In each painting the last zig zag applied, in this case purple, is the most saturated or flamboyant hue and punctuates the painting. In a sense it serves as the painting's "subject." Originally Sorenson chose the zig zag in an iconoclastic mood, as a kind of Pop gesture.

Because of the illusionistic layering it is impossible to decipher the step-by-step, orderly procedure of the artist— he himself has trouble reconstructing it once a painting is finished— so it is not surprising that many people find the work troublingly fragmented and are not able to penetrate the order coexisting with the break-up. In the second series the painting contains seventeen rather than nineteen colors and lacks gestural layers.

Color Plate #2
Untitled, 1977, 69" x 144"
acrylic on canvas

Since organic or gestural form is perceptually more complicated than geometric form, we would logically expect this series to appear structurally simpler than the preceding one. However, there are many more diagonal lines in this painting, twenty-nine in the first set and twenty-eight in the second. The upward curve of the diagonals brings an additional element of visual dynamism to the already active nature of diagonal movement. As a result the imagery of the series seems to be denser than that of the gestural series, and the structure is more difficult to decipher. For the record, it is as follows: The first diagonal layer contains seven colors— mauve, Indian red, dark blue, gold, turquoise, light gold, teal blue; the first set of zig zags two colors— fluorescent yellow and red-violet; the second layer of diagonals contains the same colors as the first, and the second layer zig zags four— pale yellow, red-orange, bright yellow and orange-pink. As with the first series, some diagonal lines extend from edge to edge of the painting while others are cut off in the center. Additional visual complexity results from Sorenson's highly unorthodox color sensibility which is so unfamiliar that is disconcerting for most viewers when it is just confronted. In time I find it can be accommodated. Sorenson's commitment to both idiosyncratic color and involuted composition has to do with his desire to provide new perceptual structures and thus expand our perceptual potential.

In the most recent zig zag series, several of the paintings look relatively monochromatic.
This effect is exaggerated when the new work is seen in juxtaposition to the earlier series, with their extraordinarily complicated reticulation of color. In fact it is not accurate to call the predominately black, white and blue painting of this series monochromatic, for the blacks, white and blues are mixed with other colors creating a large rang of hues. One of the most dramatic changes to occur in the transition to this series is the new subtly of Sorenson's color relationships. Rather than assaulting the viewer, the new paintings are more slowly seductive. They are also much more responsive to their environment, specifically the ambient light, for it is with changes in light that the subtle variations in hue become perceptible.
Sorenson's more closely related palette in the new series, together with the elimination of the diagonal lines, once again create a deceptive sense of relative simplicity. Certainly the subtler palette results in a feeling of greater calm in comparison to the nervous energy of the first two series seen here. This change is not simply a formal one, but is directly reflective of a period of relative calm and serenity in the artist's life. It is important to remember that even the most non-objective art can easily deteriorate into empty decoration unless it is informed by the artist's connection with his or her own "inner necessity."

Nonetheless, as we have repeatedly seen in Sorenson's work, every apparent simplification is counterbalanced by an additional complexity. Thus in this series the first layer of zig zags are executed in grouping of three— a thicker line centered between two parallel thinner ones. A second important component, new to this series, is the illusion of atmospheric light which flickers through the paintings, in addition to the illusion of layered or reticulated light.

The particular quality of Sorenson's illusions of light and there concomitant symbiotic relationship with ambient light relates his new painting, it seems to me, to a uniquely Californian sensibility. A large number of Southern California artists who either create illusions of light or who utilize directly the natural light of the environment do so because of the inspirational experience of actual light in nature.

Attentive viewers will also discover that an elusive horizontal line, a metaphorical horizon, bisects the newer paintings. Such references to nature, however obscure, reflect Sorenson's latest violation of modernist canon. In the context of illusionistic atmospheric light and a nearly subliminal horizon line even Sorenson's zig zag imagery begins to allude to nature in the form of lightning, rain or skies at night. These allusions to nature are not unintentional. Their vestigial representationalism acts as a complementary protagonist to the basic non-objective character of Sorenson's painting. This representational/abstract dichotomy is the newest of the artist's systematic pairing of stylistic polar extremes in order to effect a new synthesis of art historical parameters.

Sorenson's continuing exploration of the potential of non-objective painting, then, is integrally grounded in art historical consciousness shaped by his personal philosophical beliefs and psychological experiences. Cognescenti of modern art will readily recognize in Sorenson's work the stylistic cliches which the artist combines in order to transcend their established formularization. The dense and unexpected reticulation of non-objective art's vocabulary and syntax in Sorenson's chaotic structure demands both both intellectual and perceptual acuity of the viewer. Without effort we will not discern the coexistnce of order and chaos, romanticism and classicism, and other polar opposites in the paintings. The confusing bipolarity of these paintings is created for the sxpress purpose of setting an unfamiliar or unknown perceptual structure for the viewer. It is Sorenson's belief that art can continue to present the unknown in a manner that allows us to discover ourselves through new perceptual experience. It is this belief that gives his painting its power.

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