Karen Kilimnik
dal 12/12/2007 al 2/2/2008
Segnalato da
12/12/2007
Karen Kilimnik
Aspen Art Museum, Aspen
Directly ahead. Kilimnik's work objectifies mass cultural desire with glittering poignancy. On display a selection of artwork spanning over fifteen years of the artist's collage-based activity in the realms of painting, drawing, photography, video, and sculptural installation. The raw ephemerality of her works conveys a powerful sense of yearning for something more eternal or substantive than her implacably adolescent subject matter can communicate.
Karen Kilimnik is the first major survey of an American artist whose work objectifies mass cultural desire with glittering poignancy. The exhibition includes a selection spanning over fifteen years of collage-based activity in the realms of painting, drawing, photography, and sculptural installation.
Since the early 1990s, when she emerged as part of the “scatter generation” of installation artists, Kilimnik has constructed a seemingly fanciful world of fashion models, movie stars, ballerinas, castles, horses, and ribbons. Using materials and images taken directly (and cheaply) from popular culture, Kilimnik’s art may seem casual. It is, however, her work’s raw ephemerality that conveys its powerful sense of yearning for something more eternalor substantive than her implacably adolescent subject matter can ever communicate. Likewise, it is her work’s deep subjectivity that makes it immediately relevant to a younger generation of artists whose work indulges notions of private fantasy with conviction.
Karen Kilimnik was born in 1957 in Philadelphia, where she currently lives and works. She has had solo exhibitions at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris and the Historisches Museum, Basel. Her work has been included in numerous group exhibitions, among them, Defamation of Character, PS1, New York, 2006; and, Drawing from the Modern 1975-2005, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2005. Her work Gelsey Stuck on the Matterhorn (2000) is featured on all 2007-2008 Aspen Skiing Company day lift ticket products.
Karen Kilimnik is organized by the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania and curated by ICA Senior Curator Ingrid Schaffner. ICA acknowledges the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts for generous exhibition support. We are grateful to Barbara B. & Theodore R. Aronson for primary support of the catalog and to the Elizabeth Firestone Graham Foundation and 303 Gallery, New York. ICA thanks the Arete Foundation, Barbara B. & Theodore R. Aronson, Arthur Dantchik, The Dietrich Foundation Inc., The Toby Fund and David & Geraldine Pincus for supplementary contributions. Additional funding has been provided by The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, the Overseers Board for the Institute of Contemporary Art, friends and members of the ICA, and the University of Pennsylvania. ICA is also grateful to the Chodrow Exhibition Initiative Fund for the support of the exhibition’s tour. Additional thanks to Waterhouse Wallhangings’ support for the tour venues.
The Aspen Art Museum presentation of Karen Kilimnik is funded in part by the AAM National Council. Additional underwriting provided by Susan and Larry Marx.
Opening december 13, 2007
Aspen Art Museum
590 North Mill Street - Aspen