Harmony Korine

Harmony 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 murderous labyrinth of events—merge reality with fiction and handheld camerawork with precise montage. This heady mix of the unplanned, the seductive, and the outlandish crystallizes in his lesser-known, highly tactile paintings. Eschewing brush and professional 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. The accumulative hypnotic effect of his paintings is offset by lifelike randomness and impulsive energy.

Korine’s films include Kids (1995, written by Korine, directed by Larry Clark); Gummo (1997, written and directed by Korine); Julien Donkey-Boy (1999, written and directed by Korine); Ken Park (2002, written by Korine, directed by Larry Clark and Ed Lachman); Mister Lonely (2007, written by Korine, codirected with Avi Korine); Trash Humpers (2009, written and directed by Korine); Spring Breakers (2012, written and directed by Korine); and The Beach Bum (2019, written and directed by Korine).

Korine was born in 1973 in Bolinas, California. His work has been shown in major exhibitions worldwide, including Double Trouble: The Patchett Collection, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (1999, traveled to Instituto Cultural Cabañas and Museo de las Artes Universidad de Guadalajara, Mexico; and Auditorio de Galicia, Santiago de Compostela, Spain); Screen Memories, Contemporary Art Gallery, Art Tower Mito, Japan (2002); Beautiful Losers: Contemporary Art and Street Culture, Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati (2004, traveled to Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco; Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, California; The Contemporary, Baltimore; University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum, Tampa; La Triennale di Milano, Milan, Italy; Le Tripostal, Lille, France; Muzeum Sztuki, Łódź, Poland; and La Casa Encendida, Madrid, through 2009); To Illustrate and Multiply: An Open Book, Museum of Contemporary Art Pacific Design Center, West Hollywood (2008); SONIC YOUTH etc.: SENSATIONAL FIX, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, Germany (2009); and Altars of Madness, Casino Luxembourg—Forum d’art contemporain, Luxembourg (2013). Recent solo shows of his films, photographs, and paintings include Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Ghent, Belgium (2000); Pigxote, Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery, Nashville, Tennessee (2009); Shadows and Loops, Frist Center for the Visual Arts, Nashville, Tennessee (2016–17); and Centre Pompidou, Paris (2017).

Korine’s first novel, A Crack Up at the Race Riots, was published by Mainstreet/Doubleday in 1998. Pass the Bitch Chicken: Christopher Wool and Harmony Korine, a book of collaborative images, was released by Holzwarth Publications in 2002. Korine’s work was included in the 2000 Whitney Biennial and the 50th Biennale di Venezia, Venice in 2003.

Korine lives and works in Nashville and Miami.