Harmony Korine is better know as one of the leading figures to emerge from the New York City independent film scene of the late 1990s. The filmmaker, screenwriter and sometimes actor is also a painter. He recently had a show at the Hauser and Wirth gallery in Los Angeles titled “Agressive Dr1fter,” and it ‘s really worth a visit.
Korine’s paintings, like his films, have an unsettling effect, the result of some seething, disturbing and menacing pathology just below the surface. There’s a humming cognitive dissonance in his images that verge towards the psycho-dystopian. His subjects are clad in masks, carry weapons, exist creepily, desensitized, as if alienated from their humanity. His scenery — a speedboat, palm trees, and a pre-sunset sky — are realistic and yet cast in unnaturally severe hues.
Korine’s use of color is going a long way to underscore the effect. The colors are super saturated. It feels like the images were imported into Photoshop wherein various filters and effects were applied, pushed to polarized extremes. The vibe is acidic.
These images feel cinematic, if not point-and-click photographic, like movie stills from a film shot in a low-budget handheld camera style. And from a film narrative unfolding in an ominous direction like some inscrutable psychedelic technicolor film noir.
GLOBAL GRAPHICA 