An exhibition of paintings by Nashvillebased filmmaker and artist Harmony Korine will be on view at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts from November 4, 2016, to January 16, 2017. Korine, who is best known as the filmmaker/auteur of such films as Kids, Gummo, Trash Humpers, and Spring Breakers, is also an accomplished painter, having shown works in museums throughout the United States, as well as in Europe and Japan, since 1999. The twelve large and dynamic works of Shadows and Loops have the improvisatory spirit of outsider art and share some of the disruptive qualities of his films.
Seen together, the crudely painted figures, shadowy sublayers, and psychedelic looping patterns of the paintings offer up an environment of alienated weirdness, with an emphasis on raw expression and impulsivity rather than intellectual clarity. “His figurative works have the spontaneity of old-school graffiti, with patches of color, rough textural elements, and random marks developed into characters that have the amorphousness of ghosts,” said Frist Center Chief Curator Mark Scala.
Viewers familiar with Korine’s films will recognize cinematic references in some of the paintings as well as his practice of mixing high and low production aesthetics and materials. In the nightmarish The Kotzur Gift (2014), paint is smeared over photographic images of characters wearing grotesque masks of creepy older people, such as those seen in Trash Humpers. In another celluloid connection, the painting Mini Sitter 2 (2014) features a filmstrip-like sequence of black-and-white photographs of a room where his family babysitter is seated. This looping tableau is overpainted with white spatters and drips that obscure parts of the seemingly neutral setting.
In Korine’s Chex paintings, a series of works in which a checkerboard-like grid is painted over abstract backgrounds of shapes, the grid ripples and twists to create competing allusions, often to hypnotic effect.
Seen together, the crudely painted figures, shadowy sublayers, and psychedelic looping patterns of the paintings offer up an environment of alienated weirdness, with an emphasis on raw expression and impulsivity rather than intellectual clarity. “His figurative works have the spontaneity of old-school graffiti, with patches of color, rough textural elements, and random marks developed into characters that have the amorphousness of ghosts,” said Frist Center Chief Curator Mark Scala.
Viewers familiar with Korine’s films will recognize cinematic references in some of the paintings as well as his practice of mixing high and low production aesthetics and materials. In the nightmarish The Kotzur Gift (2014), paint is smeared over photographic images of characters wearing grotesque masks of creepy older people, such as those seen in Trash Humpers. In another celluloid connection, the painting Mini Sitter 2 (2014) features a filmstrip-like sequence of black-and-white photographs of a room where his family babysitter is seated. This looping tableau is overpainted with white spatters and drips that obscure parts of the seemingly neutral setting.
In Korine’s Chex paintings, a series of works in which a checkerboard-like grid is painted over abstract backgrounds of shapes, the grid ripples and twists to create competing allusions, often to hypnotic effect.
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