REECE KING

Reece King is a wrangler of restless form, ringmaster of a painterly amphitheatre. In his work, ordinary things and ancient things abut each other. Into the arena go objects and patterns, spots and stripes, rarefied ideals of abstraction and an insouciant category of curlicues. King’s admittance of a chronology-hopping cast — from cave drawings to lightsabers — taps into the long-story of painting and its indefatigable reimagination.

In ‘Apentimento’, a dictionary of personal art terms he devised for his 2021 Masters submission he wrote, “The paintings like to argue with ways in which they are defined . . . Soon enough, that argument will have been painted over.”

Reece King was born in Tāmaki Makaurau in 1989 and grew up at Te Henga on the west coast. He completed his Masters in Painting at Unitec in 2021. In 2020 he was part of the group that founded Auckland ‘painter-run’ space, Sanc. Solo exhibitions include: Solosolo, Anna Miles Gallery, 2021; Head Brain, Sanc, 2020; The Divine Angle, CoCA Toi Moroki, Christchurch; Impropulsion, Green St Projects, Wellington; and Silver, Gallery 9, Sydney (all 2019).

Reecent Work is King’s second solo exhibition at the gallery.

Further work by Reece King