ART CITIES: Copenhagen-John Kørner

John Kørner, Drunks on Delphi Ruins, 2016, Acrylik on canvas, 120 x 150 cm, Courtesy the artist and Galleri Bo BjerggaardJohn 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: Galleri Bo Bjerggaard Archive

In “Blue Bedroom” his solo exhibition, John Kørner presents a site specific installation at Galleri Bo Bjerggaard in Copenhagen. In 2008 Kørner completed “War Problems”, a series 16 large-scale paintings, each representing a Danish solider killed in combat in Afghanistan and each bearing a single name, which function as a collective expression of the human tragedy imparted by this war. For his 2011 paintings “Women for Sale”, issues of prostitution and trafficking in Denmark were a point of departure. More recently, aspects of contemporary geopolitics including imbalances of wealth and the displacement of populations are alluded to with various degrees of abstraction and metaphor. For his 2016 Victoria Miro Mayfair exhibition “Apple Bombs”, Kørner presented a constellation of seemingly incongruous pictorial elements that set in motion dialogues concerning wellbeing, human relationships, consumption and survival. The starting point of “Blue Bedroom” is a big installation that takes a wave that slowly raises trough the space. On the exhibition are painting and sculptures that have as a common axis the water and destinies that float in and on the ocean. Many of the bodies represented among the paintings on show in the exhibition appear to be variously out of control: drowning, flying, falling or all of the above in the “Sea Greetings Man” (2016) or in the case of “Drunks on the Delphi Ruins” (2016)2016 collapsed in drunkenness.   John Kørner’s exhibition does everything to encourage a reading of the works in terms of the psychology of the unconscious: from the contemporary evocation of cinematic blue screens onto which backgrounds are placed to set the scene for actors’ actions, to surreal collaged imagery.

Info: Galleri Bo Bjerggaard, Flæsketorvet 85 A, Copenhagen, Duration: 10/2-1/4/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri 13:00-18:00, Sat 12:00-16:00, www.bjerggaard.com

John Kørner, Blue Bedroom, Exhibition View, Courtesy the artist and Galleri Bo Bjerggaard
John Kørner, Blue Bedroom, Exhibition View, Courtesy the artist and Galleri Bo Bjerggaard

 

 

John Kørner, Blue Bedroom, Exhibition View, Courtesy the artist and Galleri Bo Bjerggaard
John Kørner, Blue Bedroom, Exhibition View, Courtesy the artist and Galleri Bo Bjerggaard

 

 

John Kørner, Blue Bedroom, Exhibition View, Courtesy the artist and Galleri Bo Bjerggaard
John Kørner, Blue Bedroom, Exhibition View, Courtesy the artist and Galleri Bo Bjerggaard

 

 

John Kørner, Blue Bedroom, Exhibition View, Courtesy the artist and Galleri Bo Bjerggaard
John Kørner, Blue Bedroom, Exhibition View, Courtesy the artist and Galleri Bo Bjerggaard