Wednesday, June 6, 2012

CLINTON KING: INTERVIEW


Filters, 2012, oil and enamel on canvas, 11 x 14 inches






Kafka, 2012, oil on canvas, 11 x 14 inches






Blinds, 2012, oil on canvas, 11 x 14 inches










PB  You're doing painting and sculpture, how does one affect and inform the other?


CK  That's a good question, my recent return to painting was not an easy one; I struggled with it for about 3 years before it felt comfortable.


In the beginning I was strictly a painter, (harboring a secret love for plein air painting), but this was the late 90’s and sculpture was coming back with superstars artists like Barney and Hirst at the forefront. Coincidentally I began assisting the installation artist Ann Hamilton at this point, so I was slowly being overwhelmed by sculpture. Around that time I remember being influenced by Wolfgang Laib and Arte Povera, so naturally I became attracted to the seemingly endless possibilities inherent in material and became engulfed in sculpture just before receiving my degree in painting.


In sculpture I found my voice, approaching it at first from the context of pure materiality, which developed into a kind of raw objectivity. To me each material/object had a solid state, and I often worked with a material in a ‘natural way’ letting the object and material ‘just be.’ Working in this way I developed sensitivity and a lightness of touch. This later grew into a highly spontaneous/intuitive approach that naturally adapted to painting, by this time the relationships between material and object became increasingly relative to the viewer.


I worked in sculpture for nearly 8 years before rediscovering painting, What came out of this for me was the realization that one practice directly and deeply informed the other, although painting is an additive process by nature it is reductive when seen in context to my overall artistic practice.


PB  What kinds of influences are at work in your paintings?


CK  I spent the last 4 years working on and off as a draftsman for the artist Sol LeWitt. The way that variation played out as a logical conclusion (the exhaustion of possibility) was a revelation.  This approach to art-making led me to explore a new set of parameters. Previously my practice was wide open, enough so that I explored this extreme opposite, to my surprise applying restrictions (size, time, color etc.) freed me from what was feeling more and more like a deflated expansion (sculpture). This progression was both liberating and full of potential; in this way painting itself has become my newest influence.


As for artists, I rediscovered Richard Tuttle a few years back and recently found B.Wurtz, as for younger artists, Richard Aldrich and Nikolas Gambaroff have also caught my attention. On a lighter note I find the vague and rambling weirdness inherent in art-tumblers such as http://jahjahsphinx.blogspot.com to be inspirational as well.


PB  What's been on your reading/listening list lately?


CK  I just finished Marie Louise von Franz’s book The Grail Legend; the hero’s journey is an interesting subject.
I’m Currently reading Baudrillard's Agony of Power, which is very relevant to the current social economic condition, and The Brain that Changes Itself by Norman Doidge. A book about how thoughts can change brain structure.



According to iTunes my most listened to music of the last 30 days is:
The Weekend
The Feelies
Lemonade
Joy Orbison’s BSRkR01 mix


PB  Tell us a little about your recent work that's currently in the Alter Minimal show at Parallel Art Space.


CK  Rob de Oude and Enrico Gomez created a very fine space to host their first show. It was in fact their own unique visions that lead to the two different bodies of work being displayed for this show. Rob spoke of the way the paintings work in context of the Alter Minimal theme, voicing interest in the method and the display/arrangement of the paintings. Enrico took particular interest in the political implications in the reductive Art Forum collages. While speaking with both of them we discovered interesting connections between the works and their individual ideas, enough so that they invited me to represent them in the recent Bushwick Basel where I showed a new series of slightly larger paintings, the works looked good and the project was a success.






clintonkingart.com