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Vie
des Arts #192 Autumn 2003
John K. Grande
Sherbrooke
David Sorensen; Suite de l'Estrie
Musée des beaux-arts de Sherbrooke
June 14th to September 14th
Web: http://mba.ville.sherbrooke.qc.ca
David Sorensen's new suite of paintings follow on from the Grid series
and the more recent Havana and Pre-Columbian series. The previous
tensions that existed between abstract colour field preoccupations
with light and surface and the more objective figurative or representational
aspect of David Sorensen's painting now seem to be resolving themselves.
With the present show titled Suite de l'Estrie it is as though the clouds
have parted to reveal sunlight and colour no doubt due to the less sombre
Mexican environment Sorensen spends part of each year in. The large scale
paintings from a recent winter sojourn in Mexico come to grips with the
expressive and more rational tendencies that coalesce in Sorensen's art.
The grid patternings still predominate and could represent some kind of
order or rationale independent of nature... Is it the human condition?
These paintings resonate with colour that is layered. Somehow Sorensen
organizes form with colour.
On the surfaces of these painterly paintings the chaotic dance of life
reigns supreme. And Sorensen is not afraid to work in a very large scale.
He adapts his painterly vision to a rational preoccupation (containing
life perception in a rectangular format). There is an eloquence and evident
joy rare in contemporary Quebec painting here. We see the surface movement,
the geste combining with Sorensen's grid motifs in Luminous Blue (2003)
and Torrent (2003). The borders are various tones and there is a surface
flutter of brushwork. These are colour field abstractions, every bit as
expressive in the light they bring with them as Mark Rothko's tonal paintings.
The small Array paintings are like miniature Rothkoðs but more textural
and tangible. You almost feel like carrying one home with you!!
Esquina Amarilla (2003) shows Sorensen playing on grid with grid. The
micro-macro interplay with scale and dimension is a lot of fun visually.
Your eye moves back and forth, literally skates the surface of this ice.
Even the whole canvas becomes a virtual grid section... a smaller grid
hovers building its own layer above the main grid that cover most of the
canvas. This illusion is sensual, tactile and blissful.
Cosmo is more intricate with its density of dark surface blues and mauves
that blend in a curious depth-surface illusion. The mystical colours call
to mind Frederick Varley but he was a figurative landscape and portrait
painter... Sorensen resolves to bring conflicting stylistic ideations
together -the rational colour field and the visceral chance action of
surface brushwork. Perhaps William Butler Yeats expressed the dichotomy
between these two very different worlds the best:
Those terrible implacable straight lines
Drawn through the wandering vegetative dream
(from The Gift of Harun Al-Rashid)
Sorensen is still up to the challenge and his art still surprises us visually...
a sign there is light at the end of the tunnel, and when light combines
with colour it's as abstract as reality itself.
John K. Grande
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