Sam King
About
Sam King (b. 1995) is a British/Australian artist based in London. Working primarily in painting, his work hovers in a state of visual instability. Created using a pointillist technique informed by pixelated imagery, the surfaces flicker and fragment. Each piece becomes a site of tension – where process and image compete – shimmering nodes that simultaneously make and unmake the whole.
Drawing on references ranging from art history and personal photography to internet culture and digital software, King’s paintings incorporate recurring motifs – such as smiling dolphins or disco balls – that echo themes of nostalgia, illusion, and the aesthetics of media. These elements drift through liquid, screen-like spaces, evoking sensations of hypnosis, hedonism, reverie, and escape.
Rooted in a critique of the spectacle – the process by which reality is obscured – his work aims to dissolve the ideology of representational painting as a window into a world. Instead, it privileges sensation: colour, light, and surface. Flatness and depth coexist, both visually, as images collapse into digital noise, and metaphorically, as authenticity and superficiality intertwine.
Sam King holds an MA in Painting from the Royal College of Art (2024–25), and previously studied at the Turps Off Site programme (2021–22) and The Art Academy, London (Fine Art Diploma, 2015–18)
Selected Solo Exhibitions
2024 – Don’t Ask a Fish What Water Is, Palazzo Monti, Italy (curated by Edoardo Monti)
2023 – Seeing Is Believing, Eve Leibe Gallery, London
2022 – Will We Meet Again, Brushes with Greatness, London
Selected Group Exhibitions
2024 – The Future of Loneliness, Guts Gallery, London
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