(Translated from Russian)
On May 18, 2006, at 5 p.m., the exhibition later, after: New Paintings by British painter Stephen Sumner will open at the Zurab Tsereteli Galleries of The Moscow Museum of Modern Art.
This exhibition will allow the public to get acquainted with the work of this contemporary British painter. Some thirty oil paintings will be on view. Stephen Sumner was born in Blackpool, England, in 1959. He went to school at the Blackpool College of Art and then to the University of Leeds. In the 1980s, Sumner worked as a graphic artist and illustrator, later becoming an art director. He devoted himself to painting full time in 1994 and moved to New York in 1996. According to the art critic Benjamin Berlow, Sumner is an artist for whom light and its material and metaphysical qualities are of paramount importance. Expressing complicated effects of light and air on their environment is the main artistic goal of Sumner's art. The artist conveys the beauty of light and air creating mysterious images of imagined landscapes that remind us of mirages.
It is fascinating that Sumner always paints from memory, expressing some sort of universal landscape. The artist's paintings are introspective; he conveys the subtlest nuances of the mood and condition through these imaginary scenes. What we see here is his interior emotionality rather than figuration and literature. Stephen Sumner is also a sophisticated colorist. He achieves optical effects and universal mood through his capacity for understanding colors and their relationships and nuances.
Sumner has participated in many exhibitions, among them a group show with other British painters at the British Consulate in New York. His one person show at the Kenny Schacter Gallery took place in April 2004 in New York.
This exhibition will be on view until June 11, 2006.
