Since his debut in the early 1970s Steven Sorman
has built a reputation with opulently decorative mixed-medium works. Sorman's
ornamental predilections have often provoked comparisons with the sensibilities
of Matisse and Motherwell, though his work displays an equally strong kinship
with Rauschenberg's cooler, "flat bed" organization of pictorial
space. Like his accomplished predecessors, Sorman has made collage a central
part of his artistic practice. In fact, until recently, Sorman's pieces were
typically organized around a persistent motif of broken and overlapping
technical forays, wherein sections of contrasting color were played against
translucent scrims, gestural marks, and framed areas that often held figural
silhouettes or splashed paint applied with calculated effect.
Filled with biomorphic shadows and overlapping lines, his paintings and prints evoke a horizon-less inner landscape where natural forces reveal themselves with graphic certainty. Private as thought, Sorman's works propose a transcendent identity between life's energies, painted gestures, and the trace of consciousness. One could say that Sorman's paintings have evolved from ornaments to devotional emblems; a change that bodes well for Sorman's future.
This exhibition is sponsored by Morrie Sanderson and Amanda Kinneman.