Karen Kilimnik
dal 18/5/2015 al 19/6/2015
Segnalato da
18/5/2015
Karen Kilimnik
Spruth Magers, London
For the exhibition the artist has created a group of small-scale paintings based mostly on appropriated images, many of these from traditional Delftware, which she suffuses with her own imaginative preoccupations.
For her third exhibition at Sprüth Magers, London, Karen Kilimnik has created a group of small-scale
paintings based mostly on appropriated images, many of these from traditional Delftware, which she
suffuses with her own imaginative preoccupations. The resulting body of work, made over the past
two years, expresses the artist’s enduring qualities of openness and precision, elegance and
humour.
The painting reconnaissance – a country house in Polish countryside (2013) depicts a road that
narrows into the vanishing point of the picture, bordered by rows of trees, all in a range of cobalt
blues. Although the landscape could be a country road anywhere in the world, and was probably
based on a painting from the Dutch Golden Age, Kilimnik imagined the scene as an escape across
Poland amid the tumult of WWII, overlaying the found image with a new narrative that reflects the
artist’s interest in history. There is also an important interplay of scale and format in the ‘Delftware’
work. If the dutch water scene (2013) is a landscape painting of a typical canal in the Netherlands,
the work retains the size, shape and palette of a Delftware plate. By repainting the image at the
same size, Kilimnik introduces a note of ambiguity: she at once restores the emphasis on painterly
surface while retaining the object-like scale and shape of the plate. The blue palette of Delftware
continues into the photograph Fairies in the Farm Field, France (2015), and so does Kilimnik’s
interest in WWII. Synonymous with European battlefields, the poppies in the photograph are
magnified and presented with vignette borders as if viewed through wartime binoculars.
Kilimink’s engagement with history takes a different turn in two paintings based on the life of
Leonardo da Vinci. Motivated by her fascination with castles, heraldry and art history, the artist
visited the Château du Clos Lucé in the Loire Valley, France, where da Vinci was invited by King
Francis I and where he spent his final few years. Kilimnik took photographs in the interior of the
chateau, and from these she painted Leonardo da Vinci's last home - the dining hall and Leonardo
Da Vinci's living room, Amboise 1500 (both 2014). The two paintings, with the beautifully rendered
timbers and brickwork, the table and goblets, the window upper right, and the tapestry on the wall,
are almost identical, but the living room work includes a unicorn creeping into the left side of the
picture. Kilimnik disrupts the scene with a spectral figure, an abrupt intrusion of the artist’s
imagination. The unicorn seemed an apt addition to the artist because they frequently appear in
French tapestries – not to mention Leonardo’s fondness for drawing horses.
his intrusion of the imaginative into history, or the present day into the past, reaches its playful best
in the Fairy cleaning the copper pot with Fairy Dish Soap (2014). When the artist first came to
England, the name of a common household product captivated her: ‘Fairy’ washing-up liquid. The
soap seemed to infuse the mundane act of scrubbing dishes with the fantastic. The painting, based
on a Chardin still life, shows a ghost-like fairy figure, right arm aloft and a wand in hand. Behind, the
copper pot sparkles as if freshly cleaned. The Fairy cleaning the copper pot with Fairy Dish Soap
gives the viewer a direct encounter with the unguarded verve of the artist’s wit, always balanced by
her assured sense of colour and form.
Karen Kilimnik (born 1955, Philadelphia, USA) studied at the Temple University in her hometown
where she lives and works today. Major solo exhibitions include Le Consortium, Dijon – La
Romanée Conti (2014), Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver (2013), the Belvedere, Vienna
(2010), the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (2006), the Serpentine Gallery, London, the
Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the
Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami and Le Consortium, Dijon (all 2007), the Fondazione
Belvilacqua La Masa, Venice (2005) and the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2002). Major
group exhibitions include the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2008), the Van
Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, the MoMA PS1, New York (both 2006), the MoMA, New York (2005,
2001, 1999), the Institute of Contemporary Art, London (1997, 1992), and the Secession, Vienna
(1994). In 2011 Kilimnik created a stage setting for the ballet Psyche at the Opéra National de Paris.
Image: the Fairy cleaning the copper pot with Fairy Dish Soap, 2014, Water soluble colour on canvas, 41,3 x 50,8 cm, 16 1/4 x 20 inches, © Karen Kilimnik, Courtesy Sprüth Magers
Press Contact:
Craig Burnett, cb@spruethmagers.com
Opening reception: May 19, 6 – 8 pm
Sprüth Magers
7A Grafton Street, London
Tue - Sat 10am to 6pm, Tue - Sat 10am to 6pm