After visiting the Chinese village where generations of his family had lived, sculptor Warren King decided on an ambitious, new body of work: One individual at a time, he would recreate the residents of his grandparents’ community using just cardboard and glue. The life-sized figures help the artist connect with his cultural and ancestral heritages, each its own emotion and moment in time. The backs of the figures are exposed, allowing the viewer to see their interworkings and hinting at the unfinished nature of history.
King’s work was recently shown at Galleria Sculptor in Helsinki, Finland. The gallery offers insight on this project: “His work is not so much about the individuals that are represented as it is about his own attempts to understand them, and also the limitations of these efforts,” it said, in a statement.
Before his career in sculpture, King worked in data analysis at software companies and as a structural engineer. As he told the independent art fair Supermarket in Stockholm, “Nowadays I cut cardboard full-time.” Check out more of the village’s residents below, along with two separate pieces, “Squatting Man” and “Lion.”