Thomas King
- Anna Lilli Garai
- Aug 12
- 5 min read
Thomas Marvin King is a Brussels-based artist working with digitally constructed images that resemble stone reliefs. His practice grew out of years of sketching simple line drawings, which evolved into a methodical yet intuitive visual language. These forms now appear in his "worship stones", detailed wall pieces created using a mix of 3D modeling, digital printing, and hand cut surfaces. Each work centers around a horizontal cut line and a glowing reflection that shifts with the viewer’s movement, creating a quiet interaction between image, space, and time. Mantra like texts are embedded into the surface, visible but not always legible, acting as personal thresholds. His work reflects a deep interest in repetition, altered perception, and the emotional resonance of form over time.
Q: You talk about searching for a “formula” for years. What finally made the pieces come together?
A: The pieces came together by themselves really, almost without me realizing it. I just simply kept going, through trial and error. And always tried to keep moving forward, even when the path wasn’t clear, it is those movements that makes the artworks. What I was searching for above all was a kind of base with which I could evolve, a base that could be adapted at will, a foundation I could build on and empirically reshape and expand. Once I stopped chasing perfection and started listening to what naturally resonated with me, things began to align in ways I couldn’t have forced. I guess that’s when it started to truly take some kind of “shape” that resonated with me.
At first, I made sculptures using a CNC machine, so I had to learn to use it to produce the pieces, then do all the surface finishing by hand, it was time-consuming, it was messy, but it was fun. Now it all evolved to high quality digital printing, I create an image, an illusion, a “trompe l’oeuil” (excuse my French…), in that image I cut the “line” out using a milling machine then I build the frame and assemble the elements together: this is the actual “formula”, as for today, I’ll see how that evolve change in the future.
Q: Your early phone doodles were the starting point. What did you see in them that felt worth turning into a long-term practice?
A: Looking back, I realized there was something quietly persistent in those phone doodles. What drew me in wasn’t how “good” they were, but how honest they felt—unfiltered and oddly cohesive. I started to see patterns that reflected something deeper, something I didn’t have words for yet. I wasn’t trying to make masterpieces of course, still aren’t, but I was building a practice rooted in exploration. Those doodles became a foundation I could return to, expand, reinvent. If I had a pen in my hand, I almost “had” to draw them…
Q: The mantras in works like “K025-0518” and “K025-0525” feel personal and almost obsessive. Do they come from direct thoughts or are they shaped later in the process?
A: They usually begin as direct thoughts, raw, intrusive even. Like mental fragments. It’s like translating the texture of a mood into language. I want the observer to feel caught in it, like I am. But I also know that almost nobody tries to decode them because it demands an effort, that’s the all point, a “hidden in plain sight” subliminal message that can be read if one’s willing to but in most cases will stay “hidden”, it acts like an aura or even a cellular membrane, it is a protection, a threshold that we can freely decide to cross or not. They hold the psychic weight of a moment and invite interpretation, reflection and projection. So yes, they’re personal, sometimes compulsive but they’re also generous and sincere.
Q: You describe a closed system where you repeat the same shape and watch it evolve. What keeps that repetition from becoming static for you?
A: From my point of view, repetition cannot be static… as time goes on, it naturally gathers depth.
Each recurrence absorbs the atmosphere of its moment. Even if the shape appears the same, the experience behind it isn’t. My repetitions are not mechanical, they are emotional, intuitive. It becomes a dialogue between the form and time itself.
What fascinates me is how this process allows for both consistency and transformation. The repeated gesture becomes a kind of rhythm, while the variations, the subtle distortions, the changing pace, mirror my own shifts. It’s not about reaching a final version. It’s about witnessing the form unfold, again and again, until its evolution becomes recognizable. That is also why I now use repetitive hypnotic techno audio when I post the work on Instagram, it is a part of the repetition, the rhythm. I think this is deeply rooted in our collective unconscious, it is a universal, inherited layer of the psyche that contains primordial images and patterns. Humans had to survive by finding “good or bad” patterns, so the repetitiveness is all about natural patterns.
Q: The horizontal line, the mirror, the movement—everything invites the viewer in. What role does the observer play in completing the work?
A: Everything.
It totally is an invitation. If you let yourself “sink in” it becomes another way to establish a connection between you and the work, during that special moment when you become the observer. There is only a reflection you create yourself by “being there”. The “glow” moves with you only because you change your position in space and time, to interact with your own self. At first you don’t really know but after a few seconds there is a shift and then you realize you’re making it move. It is a response to your own gaze that goes within. It is an introspection.
Q: You mention time stretching, illusion, and belief systems. What do you hope stays with someone after standing in front of one of your “worship stones”?
A: I really hope one leaves with a sense that reality isn’t fixed, that perception is porous. The “worship stones” aren’t monuments to truth, but invitations to question it.
By referencing time stretching, illusion, and belief systems, I’m pointing toward how fragile our sense of what’s real, at the end of the day, all of what we experience is just a bunch of electric and chemical interactions in our brains, that is the only “reality”.
I am certainly never trying to “give answers”. I’m building vessels that hold questions, so others can fill them with their own meaning.
What I love about the “worship stones” is that they live in contradiction. The texture of weathered stone creates a kind of time stretch, as if the piece exists both in the distant past and far future simultaneously. It looks like it’s made by an ancient civilisation but the shape itself might feel futuristic, almost like something ritualistic from a parallel timeline. But the material anchors it in ancient reality. That contrast is intentional. It plays with belief and perception, forcing you to confront the tension between what feels mysteriously ancient and what feels newly imagined.
I hope it invites you to a soft kind of disorientation, where time loosens and belief systems blur. Where viewers feel like they’ve encountered something sacred, but can’t pin down the “why”.
I want the observers to stand there and feel something shift, even subtly. A glitch in their ordinary rhythm. Maybe they feel unsettled or maybe they feel strangely connected. Ideally, the work operates like a tuning fork, activating something already vibrating inside them. If they walk away wondering, if they feel like their thoughts were touched in a way they can’t quite explain… that’s enough… that’s wonderful even…
