Anteroom | Henrik Sørensen: Oranges and Pans

Sørensen’s hand-carved and painted wood reliefs and sculptures entangle his past work as a chef with the rich history of still life painting and the intimate and cultural narratives woven through the preparation of food. About Anteroom | Henrik Munk Sørensen: Oranges and Pans Henrik Munk Sørensen makes objects with a level of intention and perfection I’ve rarely seen. This intentionality and attention to detail were what I first felt paralleled iris yirei hu’s work in the main space, but as these projects came together, I came to feel that the most important relationship between the two is an orientation to care and the body. Sørensen’s hand-carved and painted wood reliefs and sculptures entangle his past work as a chef with the rich history of still life painting and the intimate and cultural narratives woven through the preparation of food. In the Anteroom, works like Plate with Citrus take the form of a perfectly rendered white paper plate with scalloped edges holding a single wedge of orange. The surface of the plate is covered in a triumphant, expressive gesture of pea green, brushed like a smeared sauce. All of it is made from carved wood, gesso, acrylic paint, glue, and lacquer, at life scale. A snack served at halftime during soccer practice merges with the histories of still life, Pop, and Abstract Expressionism. Sliced oranges appear often in Sørensen’s work. This nearly ubiquitous fruit, which is loved and understood in terms of its color, sweetness, acidity, fragrance, and agricultural implications, becomes an echo of a world spinning off its own core and sliding away from its own center, but not yet collapsing. For Sørensen, the sliced orange has become a powerful symbol of connection, resilience, and history. In works like Reef Pan , swirls of color, leftover beans, and the remnants of a shared meal are reassessed. These images are so familiar and ordinary that they seem to dissolve into the repetitions of daily life, but the artist’s meticulous attention recreates them in materials built to last. They become frames, surfaces, containers, and images simultaneously. The boundary between the real and the represented is slippery in Sørensen’s work, and as such these objects offer the viewer questions about the value of many kinds of labor, landscape, experience, necessity, and desire. Most intimately, the work points to the ordinary ways materials are transformed and brought together in the kitchen and the studio, and the ways we gather around both food and art. Henrik Munk Sørensen (b. 1985, Ålbæk, Denmark) received an MFA in Sculpture from Cranbrook Academy of Art in 2015 and a BFA from Eastern Oregon University in 2013. He studied gastronomy at TECHCOLLEGE in Denmark from 2005–2007 and has worked extensively as a chef in Denmark and the United States, following a year spent living on the Umatilla Indian Reservation in Oregon. His background in gastronomy continues to inform his sculptural practice, in which food, materiality, personal history and craft frequently intersect. Recent exhibitions include Living Arrangements at Driveway__LA, Los Angeles, CA; Almost Like at OCHI, Ketchum, ID; FELIX with Oolong Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; Pile of Shit at Side Bitch LA; More Than You Can Chew at Great Park Gallery, Irvine, CA; Graceful Cadaver Elegant Carcass at Guerrero Gallery in collaboration with BBQ LA and Mike Nesbit, Los Angeles, CA; A Year of Isolation at Carnation Contemporary, Portland, OR; Reflection at The Muted Horn Gallery, Cleveland, OH; Sensory Overload at Whitdel Arts, Detroit, MI; Housewarming at 2170 Mack Ave., Detroit, MI; Experiencing Perspectives at Mercedes-Benz Americas Headquarters, Farmington Hills, MI; and Pyrocognition at Cranbrook Museum of Art Forum Gallery, Bloomfield Hills, MI. Read more Toggle Painting Sculpture