Modern Painters

BLOUINARTINFO.COM JUNE/JULY 2016 MODERN PAINTERS 61``````The earliest works in Susan TeKahurangi King’s overdueretrospective, opening July 8 atthe Institute of ContemporaryArt, Miami, date from 1958,when the artist was just sevenyears old. Extraordinarily,her quality of line and formalinterests had already maturedby that point: In an untitledwork from that year, we seeDaffy Duck depicted from belowand head-on simultaneously,though he’s also croppedto just his midsection and legs. Another drawing from thesame period zooms in on a series of cartoon hills andlegs mixed with Kandinsky-esque triangles and arches.By 1960, when King was nine, her compositions werecomplex balancing acts. One contains multiple DonaldDucks, his body shown from various perspectives at theVDPHWLPHWKHÀJXUHVVXUURXQGHGE\DFRORUHGODQGVFDSHrendered in shards and bits. These are masterpiecesof 20th-century drawing, and works that remainedunseen until less than a decade ago. Tina Kukielski,curator of the ICA Miami show, is rightly positioningKing’s oeuvre as formally inventive, with a “psychologicaland emotional weight and darkness,” part of a lineageof female synthesizers of abstraction and cartooning thatincludes Sue Williams, Nicole Eisenman, Amy Sillman,and Joyce Pensato.## THERE IS## CENTER# NOSusan Te Kahurangi King’s disorienting worldsABOVE:A portrait of Kingby Chris Byrnein colored pencilon paper, 2015.LEFT:Untitled, 1975 – 8 0.Graphite, coloredpencil, andcrayon on paper,12¼ x 17 in.BY DAN NADEL