Harmony Korine – Raiders
Harmony Korine – Raiders – Gagosian Gallery Gagosian Gallery in Beverly Hills presents ‘Raiders’, an exhibition featuring new paintings by Harmony Korine. Saturday, January 10 – Saturday, February 14, 2015.]]>
Source: Gagosian Gallery Beverly Hills
Korine’s cult films of the past twenty years—from the surreal “Gummo” (1997) to “Spring Breakers”(2012), a contemporary film noir in which four college freshwomen are drawn into a murderouslabyrinth of events—merge reality with fiction and hand-held camerawork with precise montage. Thisheady mix of the unplanned, the seductive, and the outlandish crystallizes in his lesser known, highlytactile paintings. Eschewing brush and professional paint in favor of Squeegees, leftover householdpaint, and masking tape, he creates loosely sequential images that echo the sonic and visual leitmotifsof his films. The accumulative hypnotic effect of the paintings is offset by lifelike randomness andimpulsive energy.
To create “Raider Burst” (2014), Korine stuck overlapping segments of masking tape to the center of anunprimed canvas, then used a broom to spread primary red, yellow, and blue dyes over the surface.He then removed the tape to reveal bright, irregular stars shining through colorful mists; the finalcomposition is characterized by a spontaneous, explosive radiance. Other paintings are inhabited byshadowy, clawed creatures reminiscent of Goya’s ghastly “Caprices”, obscured by layers of housepaint,sprayed with letters, and repainted over the course of several years.
Canvases covered in rows of painted circles and squares yield sudden variations that vacillatebetween considered and spontaneous mark-making, while rainbow-hued, striated paintingscomprising hundreds of horizontal lines hint at distant perspectives. Korine sticks pieces of bubblewrap, plastic, and paper to the canvas as he works, imbuing the optical depths with physical relief.These fossilized scraps embody dual narratives: as literal records of process, their skeletal silhouettesalso suggest drifting specters, echoing the animated wraiths of more overtly figurative works such as”Little Shawshank” and “W. Hulk Felix”. Deliberate and erratic, repetitious and random, Korine’s paintingsare born of fierce life forces, conflictual yet interdependent.
Related content
Gagosian Rome exhibits new paintings by Ed Ruscha (exhibition, 2014)
Follow us on:
