Portrait of Harmony Korine. Photo: Rachel Korine
Artist Harmony Korine Joins Hauser & Wirth
First exhibition will open this summer at our new West Hollywood gallery
We are pleased to announce representation of American artist and filmmaker Harmony Korine.
Over the last thirty years, Harmony Korine has cultivated a multidisciplinary art practice that resists categorization and is admired internationally for the improvisation, humor, repetition, nostalgia and poetry that unite the disparate aspects of his output. 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.
Harmony Korine, Child‘s Play Blockbuster, 2018 © Harmony Korine. Photo: Rob McKeever
Harmony Korine, Fex Chex, 2014 © Harmony Korine. Photo: Josh White
Marc Payot, Hauser & Wirth President said, ‘We are delighted to welcome Harmony Korine to the gallery. In his multidisciplinary practice over the past three decades, Harmony has performed a sort of real-time psychoanalysis of contemporary America––and done so on his own terms, fearlessly, without pandering or seeking consensus. Our fixations on youth, material consumption and disposability, violence and romantic anti-heroes, all find their way into his work, from films and writing to drawings and paintings. In this sense, Harmony takes his place among such artists in our program as Paul McCarthy, Mike Kelley, and Rita Ackermann. We look forward to collaborating with Harmony in the months and years ahead.’
One of the most influential and innovative filmmakers of his generation, 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.’
Harmony Korine, Caker Plino, 2015 © Harmony Korine. Photo: Robert McKeever
Harmony Korine, Sinky Monk, 2015 © Harmony Korine. Photo: Josh White
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).
