DAVID MATTHEW KING
Born 1981 in California, USA
Lives and works between New York and Los Angeles .
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Biography & Statement
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David Matthew King is a New York based artist who explores the language of colour and
movement, balance and momentum. He investigates themes such as boundaries and emotions
through simple brushstrokes and abstract forms. Both economical and deeply sensual, King’s
works contain a timeless language. Through the simple means of painting – colour, surface, and
form – the artist physically challenges emotional and linguistic boundaries and definitions,
that remain accessible on both personal and universal levels.
King unleashes his creative freedom by combining his poetic sense of rhythm and elision with
self-imposed constraints. The artist limits his palette to predominantly elementary colours with
the deliberate omission of pure black and pure white. This constellation of solid coloured,
humble components suggests the reduction of art to its basic material elements. The simplicity
of the form is played down by a deceptive form of mark making: scraping and scrubbing acrylic
paint into raw canvas in repeating forms until they billow or leap from the natural ground. King
stages oppositions between clear contours of forms and freshness of the unprimed canvas, that
left in the raw material state becomes absolutely necessary in the same way silence is necessary
to music, conversation, thought or reflection.
Download CV here.
Exhibitions
FIVE
02nd-25th June 2022
Fairs
DIJON ART FAIR 2021
8-10 October 2021
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Selected artworks
David MATTHEW KING
David MATTHEW KING
David MATTHEW KING
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Text ​
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The studio is a place where all things that seem incongruous work to find their place in a larger order. Words, images, sounds, memories, conversations–everything is fair game, and if enough breathing room is given the connections between all things will begin to reveal themselves.
Some works in this collection continue my exploration in the language of color and movement and balance and momentum. Other works reveal another aspect of my process–one that lives mostly in the studio. Drawings, text, marks, works on paper– these are the things that populate my full-time work space. Many of these address more directly the themes that lie indirectly beneath the surface of my paintings: life, death, time, hope, failure, the problems of language, etc.
During several visits people have asked me how my time in London has shaped my work over these last few weeks. While architecture and interiors and weather have surely played a part, it has been the sounds of new voices and conversations with friends and other artists about love, life, death, the future, the past, our friends, families, peers, our economic problems, our social problems, etc. which have had the larger influence. Some of that influence is evident in these works. Misguided expectations, poor self-censorship, unhelpful directives, the desire to “do good” while having no universal understanding of what “doing good” means.
My time in the studio is a struggle with myself. What to say, what not to say, how to say it, how to show it, if to show it, how to hide it, how to transform it, how to resurrect it. What fills the studio is the carnage when the fight is over.
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by Circle Culture Gallery
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