The Bar of Modern Art is exhibiting 27 of King's early 2000 Internal Scenarios series during February and March of 2007. Walter King has been teaching and painting in Columbus for 22 years. King has had solo exhibitions at Elements of Art, The Columbus College of Art and Design and Fitch Design. He exhibited regularly at Barth Galleries. Barth highlighted the best painters in Columbus and Central Ohio during it's heady 10 year run in the 90's. King has been very much a part of the Columbus contemporary renaissance coinciding with the advent of the Short North Gallery Hop in the 80's.
His Columbus debut was at DooWac in the late 80's garnering King reviews in both the Dispatch and Dialogue Magazine. King‚s work has won awards from the Ohio Art League and State Fair Fine Arts exhibitions. He's exhibited in every faculty exhibition at the Columbus College of Art and Design since 1985. His work has been exhibited in New York, Chicago, Indianapolis, Tulsa, Seattle and internationally in Budapest Hungary, Dresden Germany, Zagreb Croatia, Buenos Aires Argentina and Cordoba Argentina. The Hiroshima Museum of Art owns Walter Knig's silkscreen peace poster created to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing.
King also co-curated Heroes and Victims at Katz and Dogs gallery during the 1st anniversary of the 1st Iraq war with Lesley Constable when the Buggy works were still spare, bohemian style artist studio's. He also co-curated with Nannette Macijunes and Anita Dawson the traveling exhibition "The Object Considered: Contemporary Still Life in Ohio, Illinois and Indiana". The Object show opened at CCAD's Canzani Gallery and traveled to Portsmouth's Southern Ohio Museum and Cultural center and the South Bend Regional Museum in Indiana.
The work exhibited at BoMA is from the period beginning in 2000 through 2004. These colorful patterned images are inspired in a surreal mixture of oriental and middle eastern carpets, the arabesque of Henri Matisse and contemporary graffiti stenciling. This combination of influences work quite well with the dance tracks at BoMA which also often have an Oriental and Arabic flavor. His dream like images often play with both biblical subjects like the painting called the "Golden Calf", or modern financial terminology like "Roll Over". His wit is keen but dry and often double edged. A romantic bent arises in "My Wild Love" based on the Doors primitive chant "My Wild Love Went Riding", or the large pastel called "Red Rover" inspired by the children's game of the same name.
A large multi-panel piece in the Salon is the largest piece in the show and grabs everyone's attention upon entering the room. Near the bottom ground plane a ladder leans against a sky made entirely of repeated reclining lovers which dominates the painting. The ladder (the prop) is the paintings dilemma. Is it a reference to Jacob's ladder truly leading to the heavens or simply a prop leaning against a stage set? His work is both painterly and poetic. Here's what one writer had to say about King's work...
"Complex...brooding, opulent colors, somber tonality, flawlessly executed, King's spirituality is...subterranean. He gives us only what we are willing to seek. King presents us with an imagined world...they are the womb, they are the palm of God's hand, they are an ideal reality were time and temporal concerns slow down so that we might taste and feel and be and wonder. Many of the works have the feel of being underwater. The senses are bathed in amniotic fluid. Colors are ripe, luscious. King gives us the great love he bears." - Leslie Constable, The Columbus Dispatch
Walter's quiet masterful use of color and contemplative images lend a warmth to BoMA's already tranquil Salon gallery where people sit, talk, look at art and escape the joyful club atmosphere that often fills the rest of the establishment later in the evenings. The BoMA galleries are the third leg of an artistic vision complimenting the successful restaurant and imaginative bars spread through-out the stunning neo-gothic structure.
King teaches color, drawing and illustration at CCAD where he also received his BFA. He received his MFA in painting from Boston University.
Walter and his brother Timothy King, also a painter who works in Elgin Illinois just west of Chicago, will show drawings and watercolors together in Cordoba Argentina in the fall of 2007. It will be Walter's fourth exhibition in South America.
IMAGE
Walter King
Title: Prop
Year Created: 2000
Medium: Oil Painting
Width: 108 inches
Height: 48 inches
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