Steven Sorman: Is Was Will Be

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.