Albuquerque-based artist Max Sorenson follows real and imaginary lines that enmesh the world, from bark beetle tracks to a human-made survey system, “feeling for tension.”
Albuquerque, New Mexico | maxcsorenson.com | @maxcsorenson
In Leaves/Traces (2024), Albuquerque-based artist Max Sorenson arranges dried leaves—oak, willow, cottonwood, sycamore, and more—in planar fashion. Against the white gallery wall, the straight lines of their arrangement and the ink on their skins come into sharp focus. Order is emphasized in their display as well as in the lines Sorenson has traced onto them, bisecting the leaves vertically or mapping venation.
The methodicalness of the piece mimics the lines marked by the Public Land Survey System, which was devised in the 1780s to divide land into plots in what was thought of as a “wild west.” The PLSS created six-by-six-mile townships, and mile-by-mile sections within them, with lines of constant bearing. These were meant to offer orientation in a vast world; they are still in use today.
Sorenson follows these lines through the streets of Albuquerque, while simultaneously “feeling for tension where organic lines pass through,” as he writes in his artist statement. Noticed from afar, Albuquerque appears as “a green and ordered thing amidst the tawny earth.” Yet, as with most things, drawing closer musses up what appeared deftly organized. Fallen leaves blow across the sidewalk, people jaywalk, and cars pass in a random succession that can’t be mapped. We are reminded that we are always intervening in geography.
Works like Gallery, ponderosa (2024), chart the delicate path of other life across the planet, such as bark beetles over a fallen ponderosa branch. Called “galleries,” these carvings are shaped as beetles eat through the top layer of the tree. It’s surprising that these magical inscriptions fanning or squiggling across the tree’s skeleton are so distinct they are used to identify specific beetle species. In this piece, as in all of Sorenson’s PLSS-inspired series, the smallest, most intimate maps—those that rarely cut a straight line—are recorded, reminding us that as we interact with our own slice of the Earth, we transform it.
Sorenson will present his first solo exhibition, Margin, at Strata Gallery in Santa Fe, April 1-11, 2025.
