Sue Tompkins’ 'Wanna' at King’s Leap brims with the electricity of blurted words

 Sue Tompkins, Wanna at King's Leap, 2026. Installation View. Courtesy of The Artist and King’s Leap, New York Photo credit: Stephen Faught.

By SIVAN LAVIE July 6th, 2026

Words are the key active ingredient at Sue Tompkins’ Wanna. They are whipped, blended, painted, blurted, printed, smeared, spoken, written, brimming with an energetic charge. Sue Tompkins uses words less to reveal a message, and more as a painterly medium, like colors. Their content is less important than their sound, weight, shape, the way they land in our ear, their tone, implication and category. Sue Tompkins is aware, whether consciously or subconsciously of the economy of words, and creates electric compositions that are sprawled both visually in auditorily though King’s Leap’s gallery spaces, following the viewer around, filling them with an excitement of synesthesic immediacy.

As you step in, a gallery assistant, or often the gallerist himself, will turn on a cassette tape for you, Klove (2015), a 10 minute sound recording that emanates a recorded sound performance. In poetic breathlessness, Tompkins breathes, screams, and annunciates words and phrases that are often repeated like a fervent prayer, like “stay past, stay past, stay past”, “late to work, late to work, late to work”, “unit, unit, unit, unit!” “I like it!” building a crescendo of sexual charge, momentum, energetic sensuality, making the word come alive into three dimensional space. 

Sue Tompkins, Klove, 2015. Sound recording Duration: 9 mins 48 secs. Courtesy of The Artist and King’s Leap, New York Photo credit: Stephen Faught

Sue Tompkins, MOR, 2018. Acrylic on canvas, aluminium frame. Courtesy of The Artist and King’s Leap, New York Photo credit: Stephen Faught

The acrylic paintings in the show, Mor (2018), Man (2015), Get (2013), Of (2014), Untitled (Gleam Blue) (2006), She Did (2013), Oh Bro (2014), Point (2017), Your (2014), are simple, gleaming with bodily sensuality. The paint is smeared, quickly, fingerpainted, swirled, striated, applied thickly, circles squirted straight out of the tube, in saturated primary, secondary colors. The words pop out, appearing as banners, like sounds depicted in comics (Bam!, Pow! Zap! Crash! Wham!),  sonic power like floating musical notes, and revealing an emotional repertoire, urgency, desperation, a layered cacophony that drips with sexual energy. 

Sue Tompkins, Untitled, 2011. Chiffon, safety pins, zipCourtesy of The Artist and King’s Leap, New York Photo credit: Stephen Faught

Alongside series, abstracted chiffon works sway, casually pinned to the wall. These, too, have a visceral quality, created with clothing fabrics that have a particular texture on the body, and each impregnated with a Zip! sound. These pieces appear as small, simple landscapes, evoking Etel Adnan’s work.

 Sue Tompkins, Man, 2015. Acrylic on canvas. Courtesy of The Artist and King’s Leap, New York Photo credit: Stephen Faught

  Sue Tompkins, Get, 2013. Acrylic on canvas. Courtesy of The Artist and King’s Leap, New York Photo credit: Stephen Faught 

The typewritten work in the show exude an equal excitability, depicting poems that are often concrete, meaning they are shaped. At times, words and letters diffuse outward like a cloud of perfume. At others, the words layer on top of each other like a pile of kisses lipsticked on a letter. Secret words are written in corners of pages and paintings. Vertically down the middle of a page is the declaration ‘WA WA WANNA KISS MYSELF’. Another, ‘TONITE Come Back Here You!’. Their spacing is carefully crafted to create pieces that appear as sigils, their proclamations important: imperative exclamations, wishes for manifestation that reveal a deep longing, an immanence. WM

  Sue Tompkins. Fashions of Outer Hope and Inner Style, 2009. Typewritten text on paper, 12 sheets. Courtesy of The Artist and The Modern Institute/ Toby Webster Ltd., Glasgow Photo credit: Ruth Clark

 Sue Tompkins, WANNA, 2017. Typewritten text on paper. Courtesy of The Artist and The Modern Institute/ Toby Webster Ltd., Glasgow Photo credit: Ruth Clark

Sue Tompkins’ Wanna at King’s Leap 

Open through July 31, 2026

105 Henry Street, New York

Tue - Sat, 12-6pm