But what about SUMO! the painter? The artist who paints his canvases with a fine brush stroke, rather than spray cans? Does knowing his graffiti mean you know his paintings just because they’re both signed under the same name?
He already went by the name of SUMO! when he was in secondary school, long before he got into graffiti, and nowadays hardly anyone uses his legal name, neither privately nor professionally. In the end, SUMO! is much more than a simple nickname for the person whose real name is Christian Pearson.
From his beginnings in the artistic milieu, SUMO! has always looked for that certain something different, always trying to keep away from the beaten path and constantly reinventing himself. Comparison with others has never been his biggest concern. When graffi ti grew very popular and his work became accessible to the majority, SUMO! was already looking to distance himself from it and express himself in other ways than with spray cans on walls. He turned to diff erent media: stickers and posters. These were all good ways to spread his art through the cities quickly and easily.
The emblematic character developed by SUMO! around fifteen years ago, the «Crazy Bald Head» as he calls it, is obviously found at the centre of his compositions, with the difference that it is not used as a signature or tag in an urban «territory». A real motif, «Crazy Bald Head» presides in SUMO!’s paintings as a pretext for experimentation and variation. Sprawling with words, slogans, various motifs and bright colours, the composition of his works do not seem to follow any precise order, but rather fill the canvas in a viral and sprawling way. Each square centimetre of the canvas, populated by multiple details, could represent an entire painting in its own right, creating a breathtaking zoom in - zoom out effect. The painter invites his audience to lose themselves in the details and forget about the limitations of his paintings.
More than just images, these paintings signed by SUMO! are the most diverse amalgamations of elements - imagined or collected by the artist as he goes along - which make up abstract universes marked by an undeniable «horror vacui» (fear of emptiness). But the blank canvas is immediately filled by an abstract background, the result of a spontaneous gesture by the artist.
The temporality of his creations on canvas is radically different from his methods in the streets, where the painting must be created as quickly as possible to avoid being caught in the act. Today, in the calm of his workshop, SUMO! can allow himself the time to come back to his work, to let them mature away from prying eyes to decide himself at what point they will be exhibited. The essence of his work on canvas is just the opposite of his graffiti and the similarities in the motifs are linked only by the artist’s personality
