NYAB Event - John Sonsini Exhibition

John Sonsini Exhibition

Ameringer | McEnery | Yohe

This event has ended.

AMERINGER | McENERY | YOHE announces an exhibition of recent paintings by John Sonsini.

In his recent paintings, John Sonsini reinvigorates his portraits of Latino day laborers through their formal elements and emotional potency. Sonsini also expands his sphere to introduce still life as a subject, enabling the artist to infuse his overall body of work with new signification.

Sonsini’s paintings of immigrant Latino laborers, living in Los Angeles, are depicted with lusciously thick and expressive strokes. His canvases display both richly colored single figures and groups of two, sometimes accompanied with items such as a hat or wallet. The works are illuminated by pale blues and yellows along with pastel pink backgrounds. The interaction between these objects and the figures in Sonsini’s portraits, invites the viewer to contemplate on the identities of his sitters.

Sonsini has transferred the same kind of inquiry to his still life works. Articles such as stacked luggage, a belt, shoes and flowers can be found on empty condensed spaces. Displaced from their context and painted in the artist’s studio, these items poignantly conjure their own narratives.

While there is an intrinsic social and political discussion on his subjects, Sonsini is more concerned with the emotional dynamic between sitter and artist - in terms of recreating presence and absence, closeness and distance. The confluence of these ideas further indicates Sonsini’s complex aesthetic psychology.