John Kørner: Running Problems in Belgium

Belgian Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens presents Danish artist John Kørner: Running Problems

25th March, Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens in Deurle outside of Ghent opens its doors for the first solo exhibition in Belgium of Danish artist John Kørner.

Kørner is one of the most prominent mid-career contemporary artists in Denmark. For the first time in Belgium, you can experience Kørner and his focus on “problems”. He approaches both painting and installation in an unexpected way. In his work, “problems” are an area that represents the inconvenient, the difficulties in the world. It can represent different values and works as an abstract stand-in for what should have been there. Kørner concentrates on subjects that seem problematic, elaborated or simple, but transforms these into a more easily varied poetic language. He believes that “problems” is a figure for what he calls dramatic life experiences or events in his life.

Read about other Danish artists presenting their works in Belgium

The exhibition “Running Problems” will be shown at the Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens from March 25th to June 17th. In the exhibition, Kørner discusses the role of sport in our society as a social phenomenon that impacts economy as well as body and gender politics. For Kørner, sport with its visual language, color and codes is both influential and aesthetic. He appropriates the language of sport and thus creates paintings or installations that entertain and challenge the viewer at the same time, such as an anti-terrorist roadblock transformed into an obstacle course or a drinking bar converted into a climbing frame.

The artist says:

“I have created a number of sculptural works that are about sports, about its aesthetics and consequences. The billiard table has always had an aesthetic appeal to me, the balls, the tree, the fabric. People flock about a pool table. It’s a huge social gathering point. At the same time, billiard is an unpredictable game where each shot can shoot the balls in new directions. The immediate arbitrariness that lies in the movements of the beads can be regarded as an organic environment that I saw over stacking something very dramatic, the World Trade Center from New York. The place for the most iconic terrorist attack in world history, which, as a carefully organized game, was implemented in 2001, with dire, immediate and future consequences.” (johnkorner.com “Altid mange problemer”, Charlottenborg Kunsthal 2017)