John Kørner talks to Wallpaper* about his exhibition Life in a Box

The Danish artist gets physical with ‘Life in a Box’ at London gallery Victoria Miro. By Elly Parsons

The pace of contemporary life has never moved so fast,’ says Copenhagen-based artist John Kørner, while peddling comically slowly on his bike installation at Victoria Miro’s Wharf Road gallery in London. The bike is attached to a moving platform topped with a stall of chairs built for visitors, parallel to a vast, 12-panel painting charting a sunrise and set. The installation is designed to ‘slow us down, and see the painting from a different perspective’.

The exhibition – ‘Life in a Box’ – revolves around the physical, emotional, and conceptual constraints of time passing, and the ways in which we attempt to ‘outrun’ them. Kørner depicts runners in cross-country garb, shifting in-and-out of focus into vivid yellow and red backgrounds, as if we’re just missing them as they zoom past. In the upstairs gallery, a sweeping, floridly-coloured race track covers the floor; the finish-line dissected by a giant climbing frame that also functions as a bar, which Kørner encourages you to climb up, and order a shot.

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Image: Installation view of John Kørner: Life in a Box at Victoria Miro, London

© John Kørner, courtesy the artist and Victoria Miro, London/Venice