REECE KING
Long Low Signal
01/04/23 — 03/05/23
“When I look at a bad painting it makes an annoying sound. When I look at a good, finished painting, it sort of hums, it reverberates, it resonates.” – RK
Reece King’s paintings have the restless energy of a tossed-off line drawing on a grand scale — “drawing while on the phone sort of paintings,” is how he describes his latest portrait format oil and enamel on canvases. Taller than most human beings, many contain drawn ‘figures’ that loom like monumental hill-top sculptures from horizon-ish stripes wiped across their lower edges.
Slippery motifs are a King speciality. The blue ground of Lean out Is dominated by a puffily corrugated ‘figure’— a blousy, billowing jellyfish with batting eyelashes, improbably held aloft on a hastily executed clutch of curlicues and a silvery dais.
King’s paintings take you to a paradoxical place. “They shouldn’t work, but they do,” is his preferred term of endearment. “Using life to make paintings and making paintings that are alive,” is the tautological-sounding tightrope the artist wants to walk. He renders particularly thin that line between caricaturing the very idea of a painting and simply rolling out all the visual and tactile pleasure painting has to offer.
Constellation, 2023
Oil and enamel on canvas, 1800 x 1500mm
Scale Reference
Zoo Eyes, 2023
Oil and enamel on canvas, 1650 x 1450mm
Lean Out, 2023
Oil and enamel on canvas, 1650 x 1480mm
SOLD
Beyond this Earthly Realm, 2023
Oil and enamel on canvas, 1900 x 1450mm
SOLD
Beyond this Earthly Realm, 2023
SOLD
Mortal Folly, 2023
Oil and enamel on canvas, 1650 x 1480mm
SOLD
Pfff, 2022
Ink and acrylic on paper, 1000 x 700mm
Before the wind blows it away, 2022
Ink and acrylic on paper, 1000 x 700mm
Moreece, 2022
Ink and acrylic on paper, 1000 x 700mm
Let me set the scene, 2022
Ink and acrylic on paper, 1000 x 700mm
Some of it’s real, some imagined, 2022
Ink and acrylic on paper, 1000 x 700mm
The pressure to be anything, 2022
Ink and acrylic on paper, 1000 x 700mm
Night Shade, 2022
Ink and acrylic on paper, 1000 x 700mm
The praise is fine, 2022
Ink and acrylic on paper, 1000 x 700mm
Boulder shoulder, 2022
Ink and acrylic on paper, 1000 x 700mm
Good to be Rangy, 2022
Ink and acrylic on paper, 1000 x 700mm
About the same time every night, 2022
Ink and acrylic on paper, 1000 x 700mm
Like a rock in a river, 2022
Ink and acrylic on paper, 1000 x 700mm
Mild regret, that no one will ever know, 2022
Ink and acrylic on paper, 1000 x 700mm
Nor earth, nor boundless sea, 2022
Ink and acrylic on paper, 1000 x 700mm
Sometimes calculated, sometimes personal, 2022
Ink and acrylic on paper, 1000 x 700mm
Sorry darling, you’re in way of the view, 2022
Ink and acrylic on paper, 1000 x 700mm
Beautiful, not realistic, 2022
Oil and enamel on canvas, 405 x 500mm
SOLD
Hello, Ancient Creator, 2022
Oil and enamel on canvas, 455 x 610mm
SOLD
À la mode, 2023
Ink on calico, 400 x 400mm
Reece King was born in Tāmaki Makaurau in 1989 and grew up at Te Henga on the west coast. In 2020 he was part of the group that founded Auckland ‘painter-run’ space, Sanc. He completed a Masters in Painting at Unitec in 2021. Recent exhibitions include: Circle Turtle (with Tyrone Te Waa), Papakura Art Gallery, 2022; Reecent Work, 2022 and Solosolo, 2021, Anna Miles Gallery; Head Brain, Sanc, 2020; The Divine Angle, CoCA Toi Moroki, Christchurch; Impropulsion, Green St Projects, Wellington; and Silver, Gallery 9, Sydney (all 2019).