JOHN KØRNER: VENICE LIDO LIGHT

VICTORIA MIRO is pleased to present Venice Lido Light, John Kørner’s exhibition of new painting and sculpture.

September 13 – October 25, 2025

Hues of gelato or spritz denote a sun-drenched, near-hallucinatory world.

The paintings are rich with association – environmental, atmospheric, chromatic, gastronomic. Elements of Venice’s topography are discernible, its watery aspect evident throughout. Yet, driving forces of fluctuation, mutability and unpredictability serve to unsettle just as reference points are established and understood. Horizons stretch and warp, the ground shifts, rises and falls, defying logic or nature. Meanwhile, heightened, at times pointedly saccharine colours – hues of gelato or spritz – denote a sun-drenched, near-hallucinatory world.

These fugitive spaces are populated by a shifting cast of protagonists. Figures (beachgoers; a diver), fruit (apples; chromatically transient strawberries), footwear (a single adidas Spezial trainer) appear but are themselves caught as if in moments of transformation, rendered with dreamlike distortions of scale or colour, or recast, changing shape, direction or velocity from painting to painting.

While Kørner is celebrated as a colourist, white plays an especially active role, as in Diving Into the Unknown Venezia, in which a figure launches into the starkness of the unpainted world.

In this context, the artist’s storied Problems assume multiple roles. A staple of his practice, Kørner’s Problems – oval or egg-like forms that appear in his paintings and as sculptures – allude not to specific problems per se but to the nature of questions and conundrums as they emerge and are comprehended in the world. They act as metaphors for the human condition and trigger questions about representation, knowledge, or belief – fundamental existential issues or those that allude to specific world events.