| For more information about this article or gallery, please call the gallery phone number listed in the last line of the article, "For more info..." |
April Issue 2003
R. Olof Sorensen - moving
on! Thompson Gallery, Furman University
review by Dr. Carolyn
J. Watson
From Apr. 4-30, 2003, Olof Sorensen's exhibit
of nine large oil paintings in the Thompson Gallery at Furman
University in Greenville, SC, is both a treasury of modernist
influences, from Picasso and Kandinsky to Stuart Davis and Hans
Hoffman, and a statement, at once artistic, epic, and personal,
of problems and processes. A teacher of art and art history for
over forty years, Sorensen has singular academic qualifications:
he received a BFA in painting from the Minneapolis School of Art
(now Minneapolis College of Art and Design) in 1957, an MFA in
painting and printmaking from Pratt Institute in 1968, and a PhD
in Comparative Arts, which included musicology and literature
as well as visual art, from Ohio University in 1976. He taught
art in the public schools in Baltimore and then at Ursinus College
in Pennsylvania, where he founded and headed the art department,
before coming to Furman in 1974. A teacher of painting, printmaking,
drawing, and history of art at Furman for twenty-nine years, he
will retire at the end of this academic year. His training and
broad experience with art history and other liberal arts add an
intellectual dimension to his undeniably sensuous paintings.
Sorensen employs an Abstract Expressionist mode, made uniquely convivial by juxtapositions of intense hues, vitality of line and brushwork, and penetrations of geometric and organic elements. His shaped canvases are composites of overlapping and interlocking, variously angled rectangles and squares. The paintings in this show are even more monumental than his earlier work, as the vibrancy of line has increased and the unity and integration of overall movement has become more pronounced.
Sorensen's signature palette of intense fuchsia, orange, red, and pink, contrasted with lesser amounts of intense greens, blues, and purples, dominates the exhibit and charges the space. Like water released from a dam, surging flows of viscous colors invade and dissolve painted rectangular forms, already energized in their variety of sizes, hues, and angled positions. Varying textures of paint and of shapes, widths, and directions of brushstrokes, add another layer of animation and richness to the canvases and reveal the process of painting. Quintessentially Sorensenian is Melisma (named, as are many of Sorensen's works, with musical terms), with its vociferous complementary contrasts, its multiplicity of layers and sizes, its varied orientation of rectangles, and its reversals in color and shape. In the more unusual "Ricercare", rectangular color fields do not exist. It is as though they have been eroded completely by the irresistible energies of flow, or as though they have been assimilated to the four square and rectangular elements of the shaped canvas, which are the only geometric shapes in the painting. This piece is particularly successful in monumentalizing and synthesizing the artistic statement and in imparting an overall unity to the forces that surge around the circumference of the painting. The slightly lower overall key of the palette and the elimination of overt complementary contrasts facilitates an appreciation of the rich nuances of hue.
Sorensen's paintings invite comparisons to aerial views of the Midwestern landscape in which rectangular fields are invaded by meandering rivers or interrupted by eroded badlands and intractable outcrops. The invasive swirling shapes of his canvases suggest tornadoes and floods, the forces of nature with which farming families, such as his family of origin in North Dakota, must heroically contend.
These paintings convey a sense of extroverted optimism, a noisy, colorful conviviality. Underneath, however, one hears faint echoes of a lonelier voice. Lines diverge, like reaching fingers, or just miss connecting, like with like, across fields of contrasting color.
Rich in coloristic and painterly effects, in compositional contrasts, in historical references, in interpretive possibilities, this show is well worth a visit.
For more information check our SC Institutional Gallery listings or call the gallery at 864/294-2074.
Dr. Carolyn J. Watson is Professor of Art History at Furman University with a PhD in Art History from UNC-Chapel Hill. She has written reviews for" Art Papers "and is the author of the book, The Eggerton Genesis.
Carolina Arts is
published monthly by Shoestring Publishing Company, a subsidiary
of PSMG, Inc.
Copyright© 2003 by PSMG, Inc., which published Charleston
Arts from July 1987 - Dec. 1994 and South Carolina Arts
from Jan. 1995 - Dec. 1996. It also publishes Carolina Arts
Online, Copyright© 2003 by PSMG, Inc. All rights reserved
by PSMG, Inc. or by the authors of articles. Reproduction or use
without written permission is strictly prohibited. Carolina
Arts is available throughout North & South Carolina.