“..the ordinary becomes beautiful as a trace of the true. And the ordinary becomes a trace of the true if it is torn from its obviousness in order to become a hieroglyph, a mythological or phantasmagoric figure…commodities must be torn out of their trivial appearances, made into phantasmagoric objects in order to be interpreted as the expression of society’s contradictions…”
Jacques Rancière
The Politics of Aesthetics
Matt King’s work examines the production, circulation and use of familiar objects, expanding on their capacity to turn the ordinary into the productively strange. His work has been shown in solo exhibitions at The Massachusetts College of Art and Design, The University of Georgia, Werkstätte, Massimo Audiello, Reynolds Gallery and Fourteen30 Contemporary as well as group exhibitions at Jane Lombard, Guild & Greyshkul, Luhring Augustine, Stux Gallery, and the Vienna Kunsthalle.
King received his MFA from Bard College and is a graduate of Cooper Union and the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program. Honors include a 2012-2013 VMFA Visual Arts Fellowship, a MacDowell Colony Fellowship, and visiting artist residencies at Fiskars Village, Finland, NCCA in St. Petersburg, Russia, and at the American Academy in Rome. He lives and works in Providence, RI where he is a critic at the Rhode Island School of Design.
Matt King 