About the Author

Trevor King (born in Butler, PA) is a multidisciplinary artist living and working in Ann Arbor, MI. He holds a BFA from Slippery Rock University and is pursuing an MFA degree at the University of Michigan. In 2010, King studied abroad at the Academy of Fine Arts in Poznan, Poland, and in 2013 undertook a two month research expedition in the Himalayas.

Adam Shirley

April 16, 2016 || Trevor King

a_shirley_untitled(folding thoughts)-web

Adam Shirley
Ordinary Objects
Simone DeSousa Gallery, Detroit, MI [link]
March 5 – April 10, 2016

A lot of artwork needs an audience and rests on fragile social or circumstantial conditions to build meaning. Ordinary Objects does not. Shirley’s installation is rigid, square, plumb, and absolute. The exhibition renders a contemplative spatial deconstruction, a remembered space rebuilt to destroy the vagueness of memory and description.
Perhaps the greatest potential for sculpture lies in the notion that sculpture is made of matter. Materials do not have opinions; instead they retain actual, undeniable physical properties. In Shirley’s work, these material truths both resist and resonate with more illusive social or personal ideas of truth.

~ Trevor King
images courtesy of the author and gallery

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Chris Bradley

July 25, 2015 || Trevor King

“Chris Bradley: Freezer Fever” [2015] Roberto Paradise, Puerto Rico_ Courtesy of the artist; Shane Campbell Gallery, Chicago; Roberto Paradise, San Juan

Chris Bradley
Freezer Fever
Roberto Paradise, San Juan, Puerto Rico [link]

Looking like something a child might create in their first revelation of sculpture, Chris Bradley’s Clyde calls to mind a Quixotic day dream. Cast bronze and oil paint create the illusion of a casual construction of hot glued pretzel sticks.
This feigned naivety is Bradley’s signature. In a plebeian vocabulary of produce, junk food, and beer, these trompe l’oeil objects tempt an escapist notion; daydreaming of paradise while having a cold one. Banal moments of the everyday become animated, taunting with their own awkward existences, reflecting a glimpse of human desire in a greasy aluminum pizza box.

~ Trevor King

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Juliet Hinely

April 16, 2014 || Trevor King

Juliet Hinely
here now their then
Jam Handy Building, Detroit

Blending methods of installation and documentary, here now their then is an intensive look at both distant and recent histories of the Jam Handy building. Using this space as a catalyst for investigation, twelve hanging headphones tell narratives of the building’s past and present. While a playful experience, the artwork becomes bittersweet in the context of Detroit. The intervention leads the viewer to consider all of the lost histories of the vacant spaces that inhabit the city while illuminating something too often overlooked; people are still living, working, and creating in Detroit.

~ Trevor King