Samuel King
b. 1995, United Kingdom
Sam King’s (b. 1995) practice explores diverse issues including subjective experience and human relationships in the digital age, transhumanism, and the utopian and dystopian potentialities of technological progress.
Technically, his work combines traditional and ‘virtual’ registers of paint to obscure the boundary between organic and technologized life. The artist montages heterogeneous references drawn from art history, computer generated software and internet imagery, to explore the hybrid nature of contemporary experience.
King’s approach grows out of a diagnosis with an autoimmune condition. Confronted with the organic limitations of his body and its reliance on synthetic enhancements to maintain function, he questions the implications of technological integration and augmentation to the self.
Often he depict proxies of his own body, exploring the emotional implications of bodily failure, and expectations of virility surrounding masculinity and youth.
Ultimately, King’s work speaks to a moment in time where through technology our bodies and selves are continually reimagined, transcending previous limitations in both our individual function and cultural norms, yet also liquidating previously integral parts of our human nature.