ART CITIES: London -John Kørner

John Kørner, Organising honey, 2016, © John Kørner, Courtesy the Artist and Victoria Miro, LondonJohn Kørner, is a Danish artist who works with painting, graphics, installation and sculpture. The artist is known for his humorous approach to his works as he refers to his paintings as the “Problems”. These “Problems” concern both content and representation, how Kørner as an artist can channel experience into art and back out in the “real” world.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Victoria Miro Gallery Archive

John Kørner has worked with a line of different “Problems” for example, the Danish soldiers in Afghanistan. Galvanizing the artist to proclaim that he would paint a picture for each Danish soldier who fell in Afghanistan or in the “Women for Sale” exhibition at The Workers’ Museum, in which the point of departure is the issue of prostitution and trafficking in Denmark. In his soo exhibition ”Apple Bombs” at Victoria Miro Mayfair in London, his “Problems” concern aspects of contemporary life like the imbalances of wealth and the displacement of populations. The apples a familiar shape from the included in the exhibition, previous works “Architecture Lines” (2015) and “Architecture Dots” (2015), are transformed into an object of desire, or agents of explosive transformation. In his new series the apple is a recurring motif. “Apple Bombs” the painting that gives the title of the exhibition,  presents a beekeeper resting, unaware of the catastrophe, ignoring the apples-bombs that fall from the bomber planes above him and destroy his honey. Also unaware is the beekeeper in the work “Organising Honey”. Other men are running as if headlong at the viewer people, like in “Running Against Apples”,  trying to escape from the descending fruits. The works in the exhibition sustain an unresolved quality that leaves plenty of room for the viewer’s imagination to go to work, configuring, creating narratives, or thinking through previously unmade connections. The works leave plenty of room for the viewer’s imagination to create narratives or to thing through previously unmade connections. With Kørner’s trademark lightness of touch and painterly dexterity, the work oscillates between external realities and the subjective textures of experience, finding potential in the painterly space that exists between the two.

Info: Victoria Miro Gallery, 14 St George Street London, Duration: 8/4-14/5/16, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, www.victoria-miro.com

John Kørner, Apple bombs, 2016, © John Kørner, Courtesy the Artist and Victoria Miro, London
John Kørner, Apple bombs, 2016, © John Kørner, Courtesy the Artist and Victoria Miro, London

 

 

John Kørner, Running along apples, 2016, © John Kørner, Courtesy the Artist and Victoria Miro, London
John Kørner, Running along apples, 2016, © John Kørner, Courtesy the Artist and Victoria Miro, London

 

 

John Kørner, Running against apples, 2016, © John Kørner, Courtesy the Artist and Victoria Miro, London
John Kørner, Running against apples, 2016, © John Kørner, Courtesy the Artist and Victoria Miro, London

 

 

John Kørner, Architecture lines, 2015, © John Kørner, Courtesy the Artist and Victoria Miro, London
John Kørner, Architecture lines, 2015, © John Kørner, Courtesy the Artist and Victoria Miro, London

 

 

John Kørner, Architecture dots, 2015, © John Kørner, Courtesy the Artist and Victoria Miro, London
John Kørner, Architecture dots, 2015, © John Kørner, Courtesy the Artist and Victoria Miro, London