King’s deceptively naïve imagery initially seems playful and benign, but soon reveals its deeper, more provocative side. Her cast of characters, described with a childlike ease of expression, functions in daring contrast to the highly personal, mysterious, and individuated stories they seem to be recounting. There is a rich interplay between her whimsical gestures and the mature, often socially and politically charged episodes they address.
King’s playfully rendered compositions wind up somewhere between representation and abstraction. Even the recognizable subject matter in her work transitions into a fabric of abstract shapes, bending space and creating pictorial ambiguity. It is in this ambiguity that King finds room to broach sensitive and personal subject matter without being too literal or heavy-handed. From the titles and the mere suggestion of what is happening in the work one understands in general terms the weight of King’s subject matter. If we don’t gather the concrete meaning of her narratives, we intuit their meaning in abstract terms.
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