Faggionato Fine Art in London Presents an Exhibition by Tarka Kings

Written by Gabrielle Osbourne Tuesday, 19 April 2011 23:36

London.- Faggionato Fine Art is delighted to present "Lingua Franca", an exhibition of new works by Tarka Kings from 6 May - 3 June 2011. The show marks a new direction in Kings’ practice, comprising a series of highly-worked largescale drawings that begin with a single scene or image and progress into a formal exploration of mark-making and patterning. Comprising subtle tonal shifts achieved through intensely detailed textures, the drawings embody a balance between restraint and emotion. Figureless scenes are imbued with tension through finely wrought surfaces, contrasts in medium and fragments of text. "Lingua Franca" refers to the polyglot creole spoken on the Mediterranean trading routes, a unifying language derived from multiple sources.

The works demonstrate a diversity of imagery, influence and technique. "I Want You" and "I Want You 2", both 2010, capture dramatic Scottish landscapes that seek to evoke the sublime in the tradition of Romanticist landscape painters, but subvert the idealising tendency of that tradition by including many mundane and contemporary aspects of the landscape, road signs, cattle grids and electric cables. "Car Window (Homage to Thomas Bewick)", 2010, similarly includes the overlooked and banal in a claustrophobic rural setting, but on closer inspection reveals a complex and obsessively textured process of mark-making, inspired by 18th Century wood engraver Thomas Bewick and by Islamic calligraphic manuscripts. As in River, 2010, Kings explores Bewick’s formal ideas, playing with the traditional limits of the rectangular image. Some works include text ("Untitled", 2010) where emotions are etched into the landscape through phrases that are left out of, rather than written into the surface, and thus defined by their absence. Others create formal tension: although Kings’ scenes are rarely occupied, elements in the composition, trees, boats, or posts, stand in for human figures, as in "Anchorage 2", 2010-11, where boats occupy the scene with the presence of actors, or the serene figures of "Wellfleet Pines 2", 2010.



Tarka Kings was born in 1961 in London, where she still lives and works. She studied painting at the Royal Academy schools obtaining her degree and post graduate degree. She has exhibited regularly since 1985, and her works can be found in private collections in the UK and US. Visit the artist's website at ... http://www.tarkakings.com. Established in 1994, Faggionato Fine Art specialises in exhibiting modern masters and contemporary works by European and American artists. Over the years, the gallery has worked closely with private collectors and become known to institutions, individuals and the press for exhibiting important works which have rarely before been seen in public. The gallery combines an exhibition programme of curated shows of modern masters alongside shows of contemporary artists which are designed to introduce mid-career European and American artists to London. Over the last sixteen years, Faggionato Fine Art has been the first gallery in London to exhibit Wayne Thiebaud, Sherrie Levine, Enoc Pérez and Frederick Sommer. Faggionato Fine Art is the UK and European representative of the Francis Bacon Estate. The gallery is located at 49 Albemarle Street in Mayfair. Visit the gallery's website at ... http://www.faggionato.com

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