PROJECT NAME

Square Peg, solo show

VENUE

Mercury 20 Gallery, Oakland, CA

DATE

April 7-May 14, 2016

Using a vocabulary grounded in geometry and abstraction, Kathleen King explores ideas beyond the purely formal. These works can be seen from a formal, psychological or social perspective, to look at the interaction of the individual with social structures and systems that define, condition and

control.

Critiques of capitalism and mass media inform this body of

work. Salvaged materials are related to salvaged movements: modernism, postmodernism, minimalism, postminimalism, including Situationism, Arte Povera, Mono Ha, and San Francisco's Mission School. These movements looked at how individuals were conditioned and controlled by social systems and offered strategies of opposition and inversion. The work in Square Peg describes both the means of control and lines

of flight. It uses a language condensed from urban encounters–the built environment, streets, sidewalks, lots, fences, signage, directional markings, graffiti–and the people who live there.

The work is characterized by the shaping of objects by hand,

the use of discarded materials, the selection of a mix of industrial and natural materials, and single works interacting to form a gestalt. Titles point to organizational forms, sometimes utopian, and ways of living: Solidarity, Truce, Liberation Sign, Free Field.