Patricia Low Contemporary is delighted to present an exhibition of new paintings by Danish multidisciplinary artist John Kørner, opening on the 19th of August in Gstaad. Made expressly for the exhibition, and corresponding to the Alpine location of the gallery, the paintings are exclusively of mountain landscapes. Melding abstraction and figuration, and working from a combination of memory and photographs, the new works picture glaciers flowing between mountains heaped on top of one another in alluring colours and compositions. Kørner, whose lushly painted and seductive canvases interrogate systems of exchange and consumption through seemingly innocuous items like pre-packaged fruit or sneakers, focuses on mountains as containers for contemporary issues, not least climate change.

As such, water is the proper subject of the paintings, and the melting of the glaciers is reflected in Kørner’s technique of pouring water on flat painted canvases and leaving it to run the course from top to bottom, forging these glacial landscapes with their particular sense of movement and dynamism. Colour is used to evoke rather than concretely establish a location: yellows, oranges, and deep greens in Murano glass shades offset the brutal white of the mountain world, making it glint. The result is dreamlike, ringing with beauty but cut, too, with unease.