Holly King

Tree and Fields

2013

King creates large format photographic landscapes in her studio with sculptural props and painted backdrops. She is interested in the tension between artifice and constructed realiti...

King creates large format photographic landscapes in her studio with sculptural props and painted backdrops. She is interested in the tension between artifice and constructed realiti...

King creates large format photographic landscapes in her studio with sculptural props and painted backdrops. She is interested in the tension between artifice and constructed realiti...

Text by Amber Berson Canadian photographer Holly King’s Mangrove series is an investigation into the artist’s own subconscious. The photographs border on the uncanny, although never uncomfortably so. Instead, her preternatural compositions engage the viewer’s curiosity – the viewer is not sure how to approach, and yet is drawn to do so. At times the images are reflective, occasionally disquieting and always thought provoking. The twisted roots of the mangrove forests that form the base of this series provide an entry point for an investigation into the shadowy parts of the artist’s imagination. The differences between what we know to be real and what we perceive as real are often slight. The work of Holly King stems from an attempt to prevail over the uncharted territory of both her imagination and that which is perceived as true. In her creations, King endeavours to understand her subconscious mindscape as manifested through photographs recalling actual landscapes. This new series, stemming from earlier pieces also focused on roots, reflects King’s interest in drawing, in the linear subject and in geometric abstraction. It is a move away from previous series – despite the photographic medium in which King works, her oeuvre has contained a certain painterly quality. These new photographs tend to melt into themselves, drawing the viewer in and letting the imagination drift. The Mangrove series causes the viewer to approach with at a slower pace, to investigate deeply into the darker nooks and crannies and to attempt to find reason within a work that so clearly plays with our understanding of real and imaginary. Nothing is incidental in King’s photographs...

By hanging out of a helicopter hovering 300 feet in the air, Antoine Rose uniquely captures the Hamptons from a sharp 90 degree angle. This piece is a snapshot of shared beach activi...

By hanging out of a helicopter hovering 300 feet in the air, Antoine Rose uniquely captures the Hamptons from a sharp 90 degree angle. This piece is a snapshot of shared beach activi...

By hanging out of a helicopter hovering 300 feet in the air, Antoine Rose uniquely captures the Hamptons from a sharp 90 degree angle. This piece is a snapshot of shared beach activi...

Amboy Salt Flats (California Badlands) - 2010 20x24cm, Edition of 10, Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory No. 10918. Not mou...