GALLERIES (column)

Here comes another neo-Expressionist, and it isn't a fresh-out-of-school beginner. It's Don Sorenson, a talented, reasonably seasoned young painter who should know better than to jump on the current bandwagon and take cues from George Rodart and Jedd Garet.

Sorenson hasn't lost his ability to paint. He still makes vibrant canvases crammed with visual energy. And he hasn't regressed to the sloppy drawing and toss-off Angst that characterizes the worst of the genre. The problem is that he appears to be frantic to be fashionable. His tactic is stage a doomed little battle between Classicism and Modernism by painting Greek statuary, columns, philosophical symbols and mythical characters in a turbulent bre of brushy pigment, swirling forms and raucous color.

Apparently humor is intended, but the melee looks too much like a desparately flamboyant confessional to be very funny. It takes very little imagination to see the statues as self-portraits particularly when they wield straks of lightning. Zigzags flying through the paintings are the motif that became Sorenson's logo when he developed and extensive and richly varied body of non-objective painting a few years ago.

Sorenson was due for a change, and we have seen this one coming in recent group shows. From the beginning, the move looked troubled. Now that he has theown all his cards on the table, we hoped that the painfully confused transition leads to something more worthy of the artist.

(Roy Boyd Gallery, 170 S. La Brea Ave., to Nov. 3)

Suzanne Muchnic
Times Staff Writer

—Los Angeles Times,
October 8, 1982


Don Sorenson excited the scene when he dbuted last year with abstract paintings. The spirit of Jackson Pollack seemed reincarnated— and rejuvenated— in Sorenson's tense, energetic laminations of active paint and geometric zigzags. Now he shows new work in an unusual two gallery presentation. It sets one worrying. Fields of color ooze and spurt, shot through with those crazy linear bolts. Sorenson seems barely able to maintain the calculated detachement an artist needs half the time. He moves purposefully from subdues fiels of, say, black and shades of blue to exotically lush bouquets of half-tone hues. But within each composition is a bare containment of complexity that borders on chaos. The element most likely to cause anzious hyperventilation is the introduction of large geometric and other shapes woven into compositions. Several, for example, include a single large elliptical band that is so eccentric and ametuerish that it borders on a species of metaphysical kitsch. Well, the reason Sorenson was compelling to begin with was the risky quality of the pictures. Without that he'd be just another of the legion of polite, knowledgeable pros inhabiting vanguard turf. The two exhibitions still contain much excellent, energizing work and Sorenson remains the most mesmerizing cliff-hanger to appear in several seasons.

(Nicholas Wlder Gallery, 8225 1/2 Santa Monica Blvd., and Claire S. Copley Gallery, 918 N. La Cienga Blvd., to July 3)

William Wilson
Times Art Writer
—Los Angeles Times,
June 18, 1976


Don Sorenson's intense field abstraction takes risky turns in a two gallery exhibition that shows him still among the most mesmerizing artists to appear on this coast in several seasons at Nicholas Wlder Gallery, 8225 1/2 Santa Monica Blvd., and Claire S. Copley Gallery, 918 N. La Cienga Blvd., to July 3.

William Wilson
Times Art Writer
—Los Angeles Times,
June 25, 1976

 

   

 

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