"PARTICIPATION MYSTIQUE" CLINTON KING: Brussels

Participation Mystique is a projection of the mind. An enigma to be solved. The works presented here are magical mirrors into which we can immerse ourselves. Stemming from dreamlike visions and landscapes, the forms depicted on each member of the series trace a map of consciousness itself, translating the passing of a movement towards an ineffable presence. In this exhibition, presented at the Stems gallery from 26 June to 26 July 2025, Clinton King joins his work in an inner quest, where nothing is decided, everything is manifested.

 

The art of an image lies in its capacity to be « somewhere else ». If these words, borrowed from Hopper and Burchfield, echo the intention behind the visualisation of his canvases, Clinton King warns me. There are no symbols or signifiers hidden in his works, but rather spiritual essences drawn from his inspirations, which include his taste for medieval aesthetics as well as his Jungian and esoteric readings. From these explorations emerge numinous concepts, elemental evocations with forked, feathery ends, of demonic and angelic messengers. Their radiant, kaleidoscopic energies, visible in Four (for) living Creatures (Revisitation) and Hurled Maledictions, meander across the canvas to extend beyond the surface.

 

If the movement inherent in each of Clinton King’s works makes it easy for us to visualise the extension of his subjects outside their frame, it is because their scene knows no established borders. From the moment they are created in the studio, the artist brings together the members of the series in their different levels of finish. In a play of opacity and transparency, each canvas is diluted with the others. The borrowed freshness of a work in its early stages, the openness of a project halfway through, and the refinement of a final work blend together under the repeated strokes of the brush. This communicative creation manifests itself in a luminescent dialogue, found in works such as False Light Matrix - the only element in the series to be painted on black. As if composing a score of precise, dense and profound notes, Clinton King creates environments without scale, where space and time collapse and dimensions complement each other.

 

The challenge is to find the right balance. The artist explains me that he has always been fascinated by the martial arts, which have given him a mastery of a perpetual balancing act between intuition and counter-intuition. This nuance allows him to meet his work halfway between his personal projections and the natural unforeseen that prevails in the act of painting. In this back-and-forth of continuous effort and letting go, the upkeep of the canvas continues until a “critical mass” is reached. This critical mass, a mixture of infinite potentials, allows Clinton King to add the final touch, a horizon leading to a mysterious and polysemous back door: the possibility of answers. For although the chromatic variations, the cross-sections arranged in successive layers, seem intent on guiding us along the paths they open up, their interpretation remains a veil to be pierced. A deliberate invitation from

Clinton King to project our own unconscious into them.