3-B Gallery, CICA Museum
July 9 – 13, 2025
2025.7.9 – 13
Visual Music – Works on Paper
My work uses the synesthetic, non-verbal communicative power that the visual arts share with the performing arts, especially music, as a jumping off point to explore color, form and movement. Music and dance have clear analogs in the visual arts: rhythm, repetition, improvisation, melody and harmony, and even syncopation. The visual arts add color, texture, transparency, opacity, and the physical capture of the passing of time. The combination and interaction of these formal elements communicate at a pre- and non-discursive level that is simultaneously more fundamental and more expansive than verbal communication. The writings of Henri Bergson and others explore the limitations verbal communication places on our understanding of the human experience, and it is precisely the communication and experience that lies beyond these limitations that I strive to explore. One final note in light of the coordinated rise of fascist tendencies across the globe over the past several years: abstract art – particularly abstract art that draws upon forward thinking ideas, that aspires to provide an opening to the understanding and appreciation of beauty and a richer life experience, that engages the viewer in a way that allows them to think about the human experience and respond to art in new and unique ways – is inherently anti-fascist. History has repeatedly shown us that fascist actors extinguish intellectual endeavors, exile or eliminate those at the forefront of cultural and intellectual movements, and destroy art objects that do not conform to the propagandistic dictates of fascist power centers. As such, creating abstract art becomes an affirmative statement of the values fundamental to full human experience, such as the pursuit of joy, the appreciation of the rich diversity of human culture, and the liberty of individuals to think, move, and act freely. **A Note on Titles: Starting in 2024, in order to create titles that were conceptually consistent with my objective of creating imagery that is an open yet suggestive abstract matrix, I developed a rubric to pull random syllables from James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, which is a remarkable piece of literature in which words create an open yet suggestive matrix.
Robert Sumner is largely self-taught after being forced to disenroll from the 4th year of his BFA program when the university he was attending discovered he is queer. Returning to school a few years later he developed, proposed, and completed an interdisciplinary degree in Arts Administration at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia after which he completed the MBA program at the University of California at Davis. He has been creating art his entire life but has been creating and exhibiting full time since early 2024 while residing in Portland, OR. His practice consists of painting and printmaking.
