Convergence
A conversation of sorts
Marcel Rozek and David Matthew King
Convergence
Graham Collective is honored to present Convergence, an artistic dialogue between Los Angeles-based artists Marcel Rozek and David Matthew King. The exhibition is set in the high desert of Yucca Valley, where the boundary between home and gallery are blurred. Weathered boulders, ancient junipers, and piñon pines form a serene backdrop to the exhibition, where the only neighbors in sight are blue jays, hummingbirds, and an occasional coyote.
King’s work radiates the bright colors of childhood, juxtaposed against massive boulders that define the local topography. Together they create a feeling of joy and wonder and reflect how I feel upon arriving at The Graham Residence. On his choice of primary colors, he says “I am always trying to make the most with the least. I like to present things in a new way, taking something that might feel familiar and making it disorienting or slightly less familiar.”
Rozek is a process oriented painter working by pouring diluted oil paint onto raw unprimed canvas, allowing interactions between the materials he uses and the space the work exists within to become the subject. Organic shapes naturally take form, and here at The Graham Residence his works are firmly grounded by the desert’s rugged terrain. I see in them the detailed patterns of rock formations and the hardy flora and fauna that thrive in the high desert. Rozek’s meticulous attention to detail brings me face-to-face with the textures and life forms that define the desert’s harsh beauty.
Together, King and Rozek’s pieces engage in a captivating conversation of exploration, experimentation, wonder, resilience, and natural beauty.
-Lindsey Goldberg, Founder and Curator
I am always trying to make the most with the least. I like to present things in a new way, taking something that might feel familiar and making it disorienting or slightly less familiar.
David Matthew King
Marcel Rozek (b. 1992, Akron, Ohio)
Rozek, who now resides in Los Angeles, creates his multilayered compositions by employing a staining technique popularized by the early abstractionists and artists of the Washington Color School. Rozek is a process oriented painter, working by pouring diluted oil paint onto raw unprimed canvas, allowing interactions between the materials he uses and the space the work exists within to become the subject. With this technique, pools of color spread out and blend together before permeating the canvas. Organic shapes naturally take form and when colors mix, they absorb at different rates, resulting in new color palettes and dreamy, spectral shapes. Rozek sees in his art a reflection of himself, with each piece conveying a different meaning. Rozek’s message is one that compels the viewer to reflect on their own vision of the world. Rozek graduated from Ohio’s Myers School of Art in 2017 earning a bachelor’s degree in studio art, with a minor in drawing and painting. Since finishing his undergraduate degree, Rozek’s artwork has been displayed in Istanbul, London, and Amsterdam.
David Matthew King (b. 1981, Southern California)
David Matthew King was born in San Pedro, California. After moving to New York City in 2004 to pursue a career in songwriting, he began studying painting and drawing at the City University of New York where he earned a Bachelor’s Degree in English Literature with a minor in Studio Art. After teaching English for 8 years King resumed study in painting, drawing, collage, color theory and abstraction technique at the Art Students League of New York. He has had several solo and two-person exhibitions across the US and Europe. King unleashes his creative freedom by combining his poetic sense of rhythm and elision with self-imposed constraints. The artist limits his palette to predominantly elementary colors with the deliberate omission of black and white. This constellation of solid colored, humble components suggests the reduction of art to its basic material elements. King stages oppositions between clear contours of forms and freshness of the unprimed canvas, that left in the raw material state becomes absolutely necessary in the same way silence is necessary to music, conversation, thought or reflection.