— Stephen Sumner's "Field Recordings" paintings, a show that opened Tuesday at the Serge Sorokko Gallery, are black and white, looking particularly crisp hanging on white gallery walls and behind silhouettes of guests in fashionista black. The New York artist's wife, Glenda Bailey, editor of Harper's Bazaar, wore black and white, and the gallerist's wife, Bazaar contributing editor Tatiana Sorokko, was in black.
Paintings are made to be seen, but as the title of the show indicates, the artist said his paintings were about sound. Previously, he said, he'd painted "landscapes from memory." These paintings are "about music I have listened to, from memory." He created them, he said, in silence.
Among the guests at the gallery was pianist and composer Lera Auerbach, here for a New Century Chamber Orchestra premiere of a commissioned symphony. She, too, is a painter.
