Using discarded materials found in city streets, dumpsters and building sites around the San Francisco/Oakland Bay Area, Kathleen King creates new ambient unities, making abstract assemblages that respond to her experiences on these streets, in empathy with people and phenomena encountered.
King has developed a visual language that addresses hierarchies, such as those proposed by modernism, exemplified by urban architecture, city planning, and directional signage. In her treatment of materials-building from scraps, cutting and leaving holes, revealing the mechanics of production-and in her use of design strategies such as approximate measurement, and asymmetrical patterning, King makes works that cultivate an awareness of the ways in which everyday life is conditioned and controlled and how control is subverted.
Working at the intersection of place, space and materials, King seeks to draw attention to how people make their social environments and are in turn made by them.
KATHLEEN KING was born in Oakland, CA and has a BA in Art from the University of California, Berkeley. Her work has been exhibited at Mercury 20 Gallery, The Compound Gallery, Pro Arts, the Marin Museum of Contemporary Art and the City of Berkeley’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Civic Center Building. Her work is represented in numerous private collections.
