His approach is conceptual and often research-based, for example, drawing on museum collections and theoretical questions. He is particularly interested in the interconnections between (digital) technology, image production, and power structures. Recurring themes include technologization, standardization, irrationality, and hierarchization. As a visually impaired media artist, some of his works are shaped by his activism against ableist structures.  

Sorge has exhibited his work in solo and group exhibitions as well as at festivals, including at the Neues Grünes Gewölbe of the Dresden State Art Collections, the Schwules Museum Berlin, the Museum of Fine Arts in Leipzig, and the Berlinische Galerie, as well as internationally in Beijing, Timișoara, Jerusalem, and Australia. He has also received work, project, and travel grants from, among others, the Kunstfonds Foundation, the Leipzig Cultural Office, the Cultural Foundation of the Free State of Saxony, the Goethe-Institut, and the DAAD; international grants have enabled him to undertake work and research stays in China and Australia, among other places.

Work Title: Spurensicherung

Due to a visual impairment, Dirk Sorge questions the dominance of the sense of sight in his work and, through his art, opens up alternative approaches to understanding public space. For the Lausitz Biennale, he will spend a week working on-site in Lauchhammer, where he will create casts of surfaces in the urban environment. These include fire hydrant covers, facades, and street elements. Using a clay-like material that he applies to textured surfaces and presses firmly into them, he creates highly detailed, reversed-image reliefs on a 1:1 scale. Taken together, these fragmentary impressions do not form a traditional cityscape, but they reveal hidden, often overlooked traces of public space. The resulting works will be presented as an intervention at the Eisenkunstguss Museum, where they evoke memories of archaeological finds. For the duration of the exhibition, the artist invites visitors to cast traces found in the museum’s surroundings using clay and to add the resulting impressions to the artist’s installation. In this way, a steadily growing, collaborative relief of the urban space of Lauchhammer gradually takes shape, allowing visitors to experience the environment not only visually but also through touch.