La Cienega Area

Donald Sorenson’s early zigzag paintings have the frenzied, airless look of a demonic latticework construction. Neatly taped and painted lines in strong colors shuttle back and forth with metronomic regularity while wide brush strokes of salmon and blued white writhe convulsively over and under the framework, throwing off dribbles and splatters that caulk up the various thin layers of space.

The zigzag motif in early drawings (exhibited here for the first time) is much calmer and less encumbered. One pastel and pencil piece on parchment has a distinctly organic feel, with a brown bramble-like growth embracing the peach V’s.

Created in Sorenson’s late ‘20s, a decade before his untimely death, these works grapple seriously with the opposing camps of grid and gesture. In seeking a pacific and fruitful union of the two, however, the artist was still feeling his way. (Hunsaker/Schlesinger Associates, 812 N. La Cienega Blvd., to March 12.)