Institute of Contemporary Art Miami ICA Miami

“Perfect Nonsense” is the first US museum survey for the legendary and multifaceted work of Harmony Korine The exhibition traces the full arc of Korine’s career, bringing together over 50 works and situating his practice within a broader continuum of image-making that collapses distinctions between cinema, contemporary art, and popular culture. 

Since entering the public consciousness at nineteen after writing the screenplay for the 1995 generation-defining feature Kids, Korine has been a leading filmmaker. He has continually expanded the language of cinema while redefining notions of the counterculture and exploring novel image-making technologies.

Simultaneously, Korine’s activities have crossed the boundaries of discipline and form, and this exhibition includes the expansive worlds of painting, photography, collage, zines, and drawing that he has created since adolescence. Most recently, Korine has vigorously pursued painting, exploring figuration and abstraction while restlessly experimenting with the technologies of image making, from photocopies to gaming engines. 

From his earliest works, Korine explored themes of the individual and the outsider through a clear-eyed view of class and poverty, celebrity and authenticity, and a fascination with the gothic dimensions of the American South. His perspective is deeply structured by the figure of the American teenager. Some of Korine’s earliest works feature childlike figures and writings, and often explore the coming-of-age genre and its complex unfoldings. These childlike and coming-of-age themes have evolved into a ghostly form he calls “Twitchy,” found in paintings that are produced by combining images captured on an iPhone with painterly techniques. In his films, characters often use avatars, with elaborate masks and new forms of language, to create unprecedented realities. Meanwhile, works from the “Fazer” (2015) and “Chex” (2011–14) series showcase Korine’s investigation of psychedelic effects and escape. Many of Korine’s most recent works, including the films Baby Invasion (2024) and Aggro Dr1ft (2023), demonstrate his pioneering inquiry into technology and its impact on everyday life and the future of images.

Korine has lived in Miami since 2015, where he founded the experimental media company EDGLRD. The city’s visual excess has deeply shaped his recent films and paintings, reframing the American landscape as a delirious and unstable field of images, invention, and myth.

Harmony Korine was born in Bolinas, California, in 1973, and grew up in Nashville, Tennessee. He shot his first film, Gummo, in 1997 and went on to create seven more films, including Mister Lonely (2007), Spring Breakers (2012), The Beach Bum (2019), and Julien Donkey-Boy (1999), among others. He has shot music videos for Rihanna, Sonic Youth, Will Oldham, Cat Power, and the Black Keys. Korine was the subject of a major exhibition at the Centre Pompidou, Paris (2017), and has exhibited at institutions worldwide, including the Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst (S.M.A.K.), Ghent, Belgium; Whitney Biennial, New York; CAPC Musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux, France; Contemporary Art Gallery, Art Tower Mito, Japan; 50th Biennale di Venezia; Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, Germany; Swiss Institute, New York; Casino Luxembourg–Forum d’art contemporain, Luxembourg; and Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery, Nashville.

“Harmony Korine: Perfect Nonsense” is organized by the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, and curated by Alex Gartenfeld, Irma and Norman Braman Artistic Director, and Gean Moreno, Director of the Art + Research Center, with research assistance from Donna Honarpisheh, Associate Curator, Art + Research Center at ICA Miami.