Harmony Korine (writer of Kids, writer and director of Gummo, Julien Donkey-Boy, Trash Humpers and Spring Breakers) is having an art exhibit at the Park Avenue Gagosian Gallery this May. Here is a preview: Blue Checker (2014), from “Shooters.”
We have collectively decided that this is a Magic Eye painting with a person sitting on another person’s shoulders in it and the top person has his head cocked slightly to the side. We disagree if it is left or right. Thankfully, there is a very detailed press release:
His heady mix of the unplanned, the seductive, and the outlandish crystallizes in his lesser-known paintings. Bypassing brush and art paint in favor of squeegees, leftover household paint, and masking tape, he creates loosely sequential images that echo the sonic and visual leitmotifs of his films. In Starburst paintings, he sticks overlapping segments of masking tape to the center of an unprimed canvas, then uses a broom to spread primary red, yellow, and blue dyes over the surface. The tape is removed to reveal bright, irregular stars shining through colorful mists; the final compositions are characterized by a spontaneous, explosive radiance.
This next bit sounds like Trash Humpers outtakes. Which is fine. It’s quite the piece of work.
Loop Paintings are the result of a process somewhat related to filmmaking: Korine cast young men and women, made them up as elderly people, and photographed them in alleyways. He then laid down the resulting photographs on canvas in idiosyncratic progressions that recall other serial experiments, from Eadweard Muybridge’s depictions of motion, to Andy Warhol’s Disaster paintings, to folk paintings of the American South. Other works, some painted and re-painted over the course of several years, are inhabited by shadowy, clawed creatures reminiscent of Goya’s ghastly Caprices, interspersed with sprayed letters. The accumulative hypnotic effect of Korine’s paintings is offset by lifelike randomness and impulsive energy—the elements of “mistakism,” as he describes them.
We recognize critical skepticism, but personally, we’re really excited. Harmony Korine has recently shown work in collaboration with Rita Ackermann at the Swiss Institute, has been published by published by Mainstreet/Doubleday, has exhibited at the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf and the CAPC Musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux among others, and was included in the 50th Venice Biennale in 2003. “Shooters,” Harmony Korine, May 12 – Jun 21, Park Avenue Gagosian Gallery, Manhattan
