'Untitled (Seahorses & Starfish)', 2009
Limited Edition H-U-G-E Artist Beach Towel
GREAT GIFT ITEM!!!
American artist Karen Kilimnik's paintings recall the work of painters from the 16th - 19th centuries. Her mise-en-scene approach is inspired by specific rooms in stately homes, horse riding, Tudor architecture and the occult.
The artist has said of her work: Being so inspired by fairy tales, mysteries, books, TV shows and ballets etc. I like to make up characters myself as if I’m a playwright and these are characters and scenes I invented or observed… So I’ll see a picture of someone or something in a photo or a painting and cast them in my so-called play as a character I’ve made up or sometimes borrowed.
Kilimnik's works mix contemporary and historical references; her painting entitled Prince Desirée on a break from Sleeping Beauty Out at Petrossian's for dinner, 1998, is a portrait of Leonardo DiCaprio as the star of Sleeping Beauty. The artist cites artists such as the British painters Henry Raeburn and George Stubbs as well as French rococo painter Jean-Baptiste Oudry as significant influences. Kilimnik's paintings are small, intimate works that draw on the artist’s interests in everything from mysteries and fairy tales, opera and ballet, to cultural icons and art history.
Karen Kilimnik first drew attention in the 1990s with the distinctive "installation" approach she still uses today. Her oeuvre is patiently built out of strangely poetic orchestrations born of a zanily imagination.
A resident of Philadelphia, this American artist gradually gained recognition with the singular vision punctuated by countless references mixing academic art and popular culture, historical and current events, reality and fiction.
While she seems to have halted the big “scatter art” installations that made her famous at the end of the 1990s, she continues to make use of freewheeling scenarios in the form of unexpected collages showing no deference to historical exactitude. Drawing markedly on tales, legends, opera, ballet, fashion magazines and TV series, her installations use the small format paintings known as modelli for the staging of a world of illusion. With a sound mastery of layout of works combining classical rigour and the creation of a setting, the artist offers a reinterpretation of "Old World" culture.
Karen Kilimnik is represented by 303 Gallery in New York, Galerie Eva Presenhuber in Zurich, and Sprüth Magers in Los Angeles, Berlin and London.
SELECT RECENT SOLO EXHIBITIONS:
2014
'Karen Kilimnik', Sprüth Magers, Berlin, Germany
2013
'Karen Kilimnik', Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zürich, Switzerland
2012
'Dance Rehearsal: Karen Kilimnik's World of Ballet And Theater', Mills College Art Museum, Oakland, CA
'Karen Kilimnik', 303 Gallery, New York, NY
'Karen Kilimnik', The Brant Foundation Art Study Center, Greenwich, CT
2011
'Karen Kilimnik', 303 Gallery, New York, NY
2010
'Karen Kilimnik', Galeria Il Capricornio, Venice, Italy
'Joseph Cornell / Karen Kilimnik', Sprüth Magers, London, UK
'Intervention: Karen Kilimnik', Upper Belvedere, Vienna, Austria
2009
'Karen Kilimnik', Festival, Karel Armitage Ballet Company New York, Naples
2008
'Karen Kilimnik: Heathers', Monika Sprüth / Philomene Magers, Berlin, Germany
'Karen Kilimnik', Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zürich, Switzerland
'Free Balconies' (group exhibition), Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin, Germany
'Whitney Biennial' (group exhibition), Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY
'Karen Kilimnik', Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA), Chicago, IL
'Karen Kilimnik', 303 Gallery, New York, NY
2007
'Karen Kilimnik', Aspen Art Museum, Aspen, CO
'Karen Kilimnik', Monika Sprüth / Philomene Magers, Cologne, Germany
'The Incomplete' (group exhibition), Chelsea Art Museum, New York, NY
'Karen Kilimnik', Museum of Contemporary Art (MoCA), North Miami, FL
'Karen Kilimnik', Monika Sprüth / Philomene Magers, London, UK
'Karen Kilimnik', Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), Philadelphia, PA
'Karen Kilimnik', Le Consortium, Dijon, France
'Karen Kilimnik', Serpentine Gallery, London, UK
2006
'Karen Kilimnik', Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (ARC), France
'Karen Kilimnik', 303 Gallery, New York, NY
2005
'Karen Kilimnik', Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa, Palazzetto Tito, Venice, Italy
'Karen Kilimnik', Historisches Museum Basel, Haus Zum Kirschgarten, Basel, Switzerland
2004
'Karen Kilimnik', Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zürich, Switzerland
'Hayden-Zimmer, Salzburg', Galerie Sprüth/Magers, Münich, Germany
2003
'Karen Kilimnik', Galerie Sprüth/Magers, Münich, Germany
2002
'Karen Kilimnik: Fairy Battle', Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA), Dublin, Ireland
'Karen Kilimnik', Il Capricorno, Venice, Italy
'Karen Kilimnik', Galerie Hauser & Wirth & Presenhuber, Zürich, Switzerland
'Karen Kilimnik', 303 Gallery, New York, NY