HARMONY KORINE

Working in recent years primarily with painting and photography, his practice is built upon tireless experimentation and a trial-and-error path that produces what he calls ‘Mistakist Art.’ Inspired by material culture, Korine often incorporates everyday items––squeegees, house paint, steak knives, old VHS tapes––into his compositions, which are frequently embellished with distorted language and intentionally misspelled words.

Korine’s oeuvre is both deliberate and erratic, figurative and abstract, and, like his films, blurs boundaries between ‘high’ and ‘low’ in ways that simultaneously attract and repel viewers with its hypnotic, otherworldly atmosphere.

Among his generation’s the most influential filmmakers, Korine first rose to prominence after writing the script for the film ‘Kids’ (1995), directed by Larry Clark. Everything he has made since has been guided by memory, emotion, and physical sensation as opposed to strategy and rational thought. Of his art, he has said, ‘I’m chasing something that is more of a feeling, something more inexplicable, a connection to colors and dirt and character, something looping and trancelike, more like a drug experience or a hallucination.’

Korine’s work has been exhibited at institutions worldwide, including the Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst (S.M.A.K.), Ghent, Belgium (2000); Whitney Biennial, New York (2000); CAPC Musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux, France (2001); Contemporary Art Gallery, Art Tower, Mito, Japan (2002); 50th Biennale di Venezia (2003); Kunsthalle Dusseldorf, Germany (2009); Swiss Institute, New York (2010);Casino Luxembourg–Forum d’art contemporain, Luxembourg (2013); Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery, Nashville (2009); the Frist Center for Visual Arts, Nashville (2016); and Centre Pompidou, Paris (2017).

Courtesy Hauser & Wirth