“The diver is somehow diving upwards, breaking out of the sun, jumping into a pure reflection. He’s also falling sideways, skimming lagoon syrup and crab nebulae. Thought vapours form more easily around suspended detritus. Watch, the tiny bubbles hug the olive. Elsewhere beneath the surface, algae bloom in the nutrient-rich shallows and the microorganism–shrimp–flamingo collaboration thrives in the super-brine. Tutti frutti often includes glacé cherries, candied orange peel, and rum-drowned raisins. Spumoni is a moulded triptych: pistachio, cherry, chocolate. Stracciatella is more event than flavour, melt hitting cold churn – snap, shatter, scatter. But John knows that taxonomies fail under scrutiny. Each begins to slide under the glare.”

This month’s cover story features a detail from “Lido Lagoon”, one of the paintings that appeared, alongside works in glass, in John Kørner’s “Venice Lido Light”, which recently wrapped up at Victoria Miro’s Venice gallery. The exhibition was accompanied by a new essay (a fragment of which appears above) by Latitudes’ Max Andrews – Max’s third text on Kørner’s work, following “The Kørner Problem” for the artist’s 2017 Roulette Russe monograph, and an earlier catalogue essay for his 2006 exhibition at Victoria Miro, London.

“A painter of problems that take shape in reality finds himself painting in a city literally sinking under the weight of intractable troubles,” Max writes in another passage. “Cocoon-like problems continue to manifest – a row is posing on a horizon, look – but never as a reaction to something gone wrong. On the beach, his mental clouds are precipitating doubt about how to picture a place that is already so saturated. No masks. No vedute. No Death in Venice. No Jeff in Venice.”