Vonn Sumner aims to convey hidden depths to go with his subjects’ hidden identities, somehow disconnected from their actions and surroundings, they are in fact Somewhere Else, as is the name of his latest collection of oil paintings. Aside from the crestfallen urban knight in Slouching Warrior, his figures betray little emotion, their expressions often visible only from the mouth down, the top half obscured by a bizarre range of humorous headgear. It’s this apparent obliviousness that gives the Californian artist’s work its charm.
Sumner presents his absurd subjects with their odd behaviour and outlandish wardrobes, something of a surrealist imagining of the costume of as-yet-undiscovered tribes of man, in a limited palette to further divorce them from reality. He places his technique somewhere between painting and drawing, the formalism at odds with the fiction of their depictions, and you can examine them in greater detail at the Merry Karnowsky Gallery, Los Angeles, before 15th June.
Sumner Reliquary, 2012
oil on canvas
60 x 48 inches
Neo Byzantine, 2013
oil on canvas
20 x 18 inches
In The Morning, 2008
oil on canvas
64 x 108 inches
Grey Totem, 2011
acrylic gesso stage
60 x 48 inches
The Last King (Detail), 2011
oil on linen
65 x 50 inches
