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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. 

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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 

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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

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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