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Sam King (b. 1995)
Sam King’s practice investigates the body as an interface between sacred and profane realms. His work challenges personal and social inertia by propounding a corporeal experience that conveys both sensuality and abjection. Distorting the body to reveal what is suppressed, contained and removed by society such as our desires and repulsions, King aims to disrupt normative notions of identity in order to trigger a primordial reconnection with the self through the instinctual and innate.
King draws on the chiaroscuro techniques of the Old Masters aimed to inspire veneration and awe. Yet unlike their notion of spirituality, conveyed by a divinely inspired, biographically coherent subject, he denies this agenda, rupturing the soundness of the figure. The result is a work that locates the spiritual within the indeterminate and contingent forms of the body.
Using interplay of colour and monochrome to suggest different levels of sensation, along with impasto technique to mimic the carnality of the body, his works invite for a visceral reaction prior to intellectual response. Confronting questions of being, spirituality and abjection, King strips away the physical boundaries of reality to reveal the body as the active site in which meaning is produced.
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Education.
The Art Academy, Fine Art Diploma, 2015-2018
Prizes and Awards.
2018 - Jorge Aguilar-Agon Student Artist Award - Winner
LSM Art Award – Winner of Popular Vote
Residencies.
2019 - Auc Art Lab, London
2017- Jardin Orange Artist Residency, Shenzhen, China
2016- Boom Festival, Idanha-a-Nova, Portugal
Press.
2019 – Veneno Magazine Issue 1 (February) - Interview
2018 - Fine Art + Framing Today June Edition
Average Art Magazine May Edition
2016 - Inside Street Art Melbourne
2015 - Street Art: Australia
Solo Shows.
2018
Presence, Digitas, London
Selected Group exhibitions.
2019
Auc Art Lab, London
2018
Graduate Show, The Art Academy, London
Guild Artists Exhibition, Stratford-Upon Avon & London
2017
To be Continued, Menier Gallery, London
Wheel2Wall, Neurotitan Gallery, Berlin
Summer Show, Jardin Orange Gallery, Shenzhen, China
2016
Boom Festival, Idanha-a-Nova, Portugal
Art Lover Ground, Café 1001, London
2015
Temporary Autonomous Art, The Birds Nest, London