Harmony Korine

I’ve long been interested in loops, mistakes, trance-y repetition. It’s like writing a novel with pages missing in all the right places.
—Harmony Korine

Gagosian Beverly Hills is pleased to present new paintings by Harmony Korine.

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 hand-held 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 the paintings is offset by lifelike randomness and impulsive energy.

To create Raider Burst (2014), Korine stuck overlapping segments of masking tape to the center of an unprimed 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 final composition is characterized by a spontaneous, explosive radiance. Other paintings are inhabited by shadowy, clawed creatures reminiscent of Goya’s ghastly Caprices, obscured by layers of housepaint, sprayed with letters, and repainted over the course of several years.