Thorbjørn Sørensen

Since graduating from Oslo’s art academy in 1991, Thorbjørn Sørensen (b. 1961) has worked with several painting genres, for example, watercolours of birds, photorealistic landscapes and abstract stripe paintings. His geometric abstractions resembling targets and colourful bar-codes are perhaps the most well known of his creations.

Viewed from the perspective of painting traditions, Sørensen is seen as a kind of rebel in the Norwegian artworld. This is also confirmed when we compare him with his contemporaries. Like Mari Slaattelid, he has studied and pursued artistic practice in an era dominated by conceptual tendencies and a myriad of artistic techniques and media. Yet by insisting on the visual language of painting, he situates himself in a long and apparently unbroken art-historical tradition. This is not without controversy. His reductive painterly expression allows us to draw historical connections to both Constructivism and Minimalism, but he applies a liberating humour and distance to the pretentious history and metaphysical ballast of abstract art. This attitude he shares with Gerhard Richter, among others.

The exhibited work, Pluss (1999), raises the question of weather its starting point can be painting (in any traditional form). This is because the work comes across as an industrially produced, perfect surface – a product. The canvas is divided into vertical stripes: the beautiful pastel colours combined with more intense hues seem to suggest wall paper, textile prints or clothing design (e.g., Paul Smith or Sonia Rykiel).

Despite the references to mass production techniques, it is still possible to discover painterly qualities in Sørensen’s stripe pictures. They have a rare ability to initiate long-lasting visual experiences. The straight stripes and colours trigger simultaneous contrasts and physiological effects that conjure forth optical illusions of movement. What at first seems like a rule-following pattern turns out to neither follow a rule nor be symmetrical. Pluss has a horizontal format that invites Western viewers to 'read' it from left to right. Once we begin reading, however, the lines start pulsating and moving back and forth. Sørensen’s pictures have independent, complex rhythms causing us to perceive them as simultaneously familiar and strange – as both wallpaper and pure, abstract art. The precise airbrush technique serves to emphasize these qualities because it allows paint to permeate the canvas differently than if it were applied with a brush.

The results are almost perfect illusions of readymades – be they photographs or pieces of wallpaper. This is in fact a recurring theme in Sørensen’s art. With true Duchampian spirit, Sørensen allows his works to explore and transcend the boundaries of painting and to ask questions about what can pass for art. It is up to us to open our eyes, to look around and to complete the creation of such works.

GÅ