Heskin Contemporary is pleased to announce “The Edge of Dark: Recent Drawings” by John McDevitt King. The opening reception will be held on January 30th 6-9 pm.

In his first exhibition at Heskin Contemporary John King will exhibit eleven graphite drawings and one video.

King’s work hovers in this half-world of hybrid objects composed of the known and the invented, in a space between the seen and the dreamed. What one comes to know in the experience of King’s art has not so much to do with a knowledge of thingliness, per se, but rather an intensifying awareness of how the mind’s imaginative capacity enriches and complicates what we might think we already know. John’s imagination grounds itself where the demand to withhold arises simultaneously with the desire to reveal. Indeed, John’s art asks his viewer to see what is revealed in the withheld and, consider the life-giving paradox, that revealing never reveals enough. Our imaginations always want more and thus narratives begin.

The video is King’s first; a study for a conceived larger piece titled “Born Twice.” Shot from a single perspective, Born Twice (Yellow) shows the transformation of an actual diamond from its rough state to faceted gem. It shows over time the searching of form that we see frozen in King’s drawings. While King’s drawings freeze time the video image transforms over time.

John King was born in Detroit, MI and lives and works in New York City. He received his MFA from Hunter College, City University of New York. He attended the New York Studio School and received his BFA from Wayne State University, Detroit, MI. His work is the collections of the Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, New York, Harvard University Art Museum, Cambridge, MA, The Library of Congress, Washington DC, New Mexico Museum of Art, Santa Fe, NM and the Weatherspoon Art Gallery, University of North Carolina, Greensboro, NC among others. This will be John’s first solo exhibition at Heskin Contemporary.