Phil King: "SETS"

About

Phil King: "SETS"
29/01/15 - 14/02/15. Wed - Sat // Mer - Sad 12.30 - 5.30.
Opening // Noson Agoriadol 30.01.15 6 - 8pm
Talk // Sgwrs 06.01.15. 6.30 - 7.30
Curated by / Curadu gan Pascal-Michel Dubois

Phil King: "SETS"

Careful to put things together, lots of thought going into the groups of work, but also an openness that makes it silly for me to ask the question “what is this about"? And yet in lived space I’m just fine with things everywhere - prefer it in order to see the juxtaposition of things - unexpected relevance’s and pairings and contrasts. Leaving things loose and open; in-between. I think that I have learned something from looking at lots of art and reading philosophy but also that such looking and thinking put me in touch with my own changing habits and habitats.
I took to generally laying out my paintings in groups of three a few years ago. “Sets” is a result of that.

I'm interested in the way that such sets indicate possible bodies of work; different fortunes. Like dealing cards in a way. Putting them together makes different things happen, there’s an element of chance that resonates with the spontaneous elements of the painting itself. I'm interested in the fluid nature of that, the possible event of it, in surprise, attempting to control or contain that in single canvases, as a state, wouldn't interest me so much. I'm interested in how collections and collectors work, the collective as part of the nature of individual painting. I’m interested in arrangement and placing and work from a position of doubt, doubt that painting itself is even possible, yet find each painting, each grouping, as a surprise that can provokes any number of different stories and yet fail to fulfill any of them.
Having been brought up in England and France with Welsh grandmothers I have come to understand my work as one of passage between states and languages, I have recently returned from living and working in California where I found the underlying collisions of cultural influences and languages of great impact under the general United States integration policy.
I've found my way to a kind of display that suits and pushes a tendency to paint and make things in a range of different ways, a way of thinking that makes reliable identity problematic. And it draws attention to how art in general is put together, how its questionable and creative nature might work in an age dominated by the needs of investment and efficient results. It’s the sense of different artists with different focuses working together at the highest pitch that I find inspirational; in Cézanne for example I find an artist whose unity is just another part of what their paintings do. My work in general tries to dig out the unexpected and unknown aspect of art history, to mine for gold.