ART CITIES: Vienna-Karen Kilimnik

Left: Karen Kilimnik, waterlilies in the sky by Monet, 2021, Water soluble oil color on canvas, 61 x 51 x 2.5 cm / 24 x 20 x 1 in, © Karen Kilimnik, Courtesy the artist and Galerie Eva Presenhube Center Karen Kilimnik, the Spring zephyr, 2021, Water soluble oil color on canvas, 61 x 51 x 2.5 cm / 24 x 20 x 1 in, © Karen Kilimnik, Courtesy the artist and Galerie Eva Presenhuber Right: Karen Kilimnik, the midlands, the elven stream, 2022, Water soluble oil color on canvas, 35.5 x 28 x 2.5 cm / 14 x 11 x 1 in, © Karen Kilimnik, Courtesy the artist and Galerie Eva PresenhuberKaren Kilimnik’s paintings and drawings are suffused with her own imaginative ideas and draw viewers into a world of grandeur, humor, and fantasy. Scenes of pastoral landscapes, elven forests, castle exteriors, figures, and horses give the viewer a direct encounter with the unguarded verve of Kilimnik’s wit and her engagement with history, always balanced by her assured sense of color and form.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Galerie Eva Presenhuber Archive

Karen Kilimnik’s presents her first solo exhibition in Vienna in over a decade. Kilimnik was previously the subject of solo exhibitions in Vienna at the Belvedere in 2010, Intervention organized by Agnes Husslein-Arco, and Galerie Ballgasse in 1992. Kilimnik presents a selection of her most recent works on canvas and paper. Detailed, finely-worked architectural drawings from 2020 are on view alongside oil paintings created between 2020 and 2022. Together they illuminate the scope and complexity of Kilimnik’s thematic world. For more than 40 years, Kilimnik has navigated an inexhaustible cosmos influenced by the traditions of Romantic painting, architecture, and landscape painting. Her work gives equal weight to a broad array of subject matter, finding inspiration in such diverse sources as Old Master paintings and television programs, fairy tales, films, literature, magazines, advertising, and store window displays. Her oeuvre explores themes of mythology and femininity, history and fiction.The detailed architectural drawings are reminiscent of the ambitious landscape depictions and architectural drawings made by artists and sightseers during the Grand Tour. Karen Kilimnik studied art and architecture at Temple University in Philadelphia. In the early 1990s she created installations in the American genre of scatter art: found objects assembled and disseminated on the ground in seemingly random fashion with no particular formal intention. In 1990 she participated in group exhibitions at Stux Gallery in New York. The following year her large installation “I Don’t Like Mondays, the Boomtown Rats, Shooting Spree or Schoolyard Massacre” (1991) referenced a school shooting as well as a title of a Boomtown Rats’ song. In this work the artist scattered pistols, rifles and a stereo on the ground, and attaching targets of human silhouettes on the wall, with traces of red paint alluding to the massacre. However, K. Kilimnik became known for her drawings and paintings. She produces small- and large-format oil paintings in which she explores themes of gender and subjects from the history of 18th-century art with a revisionism influenced by the pop culture of mass media. In 2005 her solo exhibitions at the Bevilacqua La Masa Foundation in Venice and the Haus Zum Kirschgarten in Basel she camouflaged her “historic” paintings in the original 18th-century decor of the buildings creating interplay of references. Fascinated by the media, the life of celebrities and success stories, K. Kilimnik dove into a universe of dreams and magic. Fairy tales and the universe of dance are also part of her iconographic vocabulary. In 2007 an exhibition of her work took place in several American museums as well as at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris and at the Serpentine Gallery in London. In 2008 she participated in the Whitney Biennial in New York.

Photo Left: Karen Kilimnik, waterlilies in the sky by Monet, 2021, Water soluble oil color on canvas, 61 x 51 x 2.5 cm / 24 x 20 x 1 in, © Karen Kilimnik, Courtesy the artist and Galerie Eva Presenhuber. Center: Karen Kilimnik, the Spring zephyr, 2021, Water soluble oil color on canvas, 61 x 51 x 2.5 cm / 24 x 20 x 1 in, © Karen Kilimnik, Courtesy the artist and Galerie Eva Presenhuber. Right: Karen Kilimnik, the midlands, the elven stream, 2022, Water soluble oil color on canvas, 35.5 x 28 x 2.5 cm / 14 x 11 x 1 in, © Karen Kilimnik, Courtesy the artist and Galerie Eva Presenhuber

Info: Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Lichtenfelsgasse 5, Vienna, Austria, Duration: 10/9-29/10/2022, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri 11:00-18:00, Sat 11:00-15:00, www.presenhuber.com/

Karen Kilimnik, the charmed Rathaus, 2021, Acrylic and china marker on paper, Sheet 76 x 101.5 cm / 30 x 40 in, Frame 114 x 139 x 5.5 cm / 44 7/8 x 54 3/4 x 2 1/8 in, © Karen Kilimnik, Courtesy the artist and Galerie Eva Presenhuber
Karen Kilimnik, the charmed Rathaus, 2021, Acrylic and china marker on paper, Sheet 76 x 101.5 cm / 30 x 40 in, Frame 114 x 139 x 5.5 cm / 44 7/8 x 54 3/4 x 2 1/8 in, © Karen Kilimnik, Courtesy the artist and Galerie Eva Presenhuber

 

 

Karen Kilimnik, the pastel country palace, 2020, Acrylic and china marker on paper, Sheet 66 x 101.5 cm / 26 x 40 in, Frame 100 x 135 x 5 cm / 39 3/8 x 53 1/8 x 2 i, © Karen Kilimnik, Courtesy the artist and Galerie Eva Presenhuber
Karen Kilimnik, the pastel country palace, 2020, Acrylic and china marker on paper, Sheet 66 x 101.5 cm / 26 x 40 in, Frame 100 x 135 x 5 cm / 39 3/8 x 53 1/8 x 2 in, © Karen Kilimnik, Courtesy the artist and Galerie Eva Presenhuber

 

 

Karen Kilimnik, the castle in Scotland the military tour. home of the Laird & the clan. Martin Randall Travel Tours, 2020, Acrylic, tempera, and china marker on paper, Sheet 66 x 101.5 cm / 26 x 40 in, Frame 97 x 132 x 3.5 cm / 38 1/4 x 52 x 1 3/8 in, © Karen Kilimnik, Courtesy the artist and Galerie Eva Presenhuber
Karen Kilimnik, the castle in Scotland the military tour. home of the Laird & the clan. Martin Randall Travel Tours, 2020, Acrylic, tempera, and china marker on paper, Sheet 66 x 101.5 cm / 26 x 40 in, Frame 97 x 132 x 3.5 cm / 38 1/4 x 52 x 1 3/8 in, © Karen Kilimnik, Courtesy the artist and Galerie Eva Presenhuber

 

 

Karen Kilimnik, the sky in England, 2021, Water soluble oil color on canvas, 40.5 x 61 cm / 16 x 24 in, © Karen Kilimnik, Courtesy the artist and Galerie Eva Presenhuber
Karen Kilimnik, the sky in England, 2021, Water soluble oil color on canvas, 40.5 x 61 cm / 16 x 24 in, © Karen Kilimnik, Courtesy the artist and Galerie Eva Presenhuber

 

 

Karen Kilimnik, castle of the clan Macnab, Scotland. Tours to the Twelfth century - castles, campaigns, conquest, military architecture + medieval wales - Martin Randall Travel, 2020, Acrylic and china marker on paper, Sheet 66 x 101.5 cm / 26 x 40 in, Frame 104 x 139 x 5.5 cm / 41 x 54 3/4 x 2 1/8 in, © Karen Kilimnik, Courtesy the artist and Galerie Eva Presenhuber
Karen Kilimnik, castle of the clan Macnab, Scotland. Tours to the Twelfth century – castles, campaigns, conquest, military architecture + medieval wales – Martin Randall Travel, 2020, Acrylic and china marker on paper, Sheet 66 x 101.5 cm / 26 x 40 in, Frame 104 x 139 x 5.5 cm / 41 x 54 3/4 x 2 1/8 in, © Karen Kilimnik, Courtesy the artist and Galerie Eva Presenhuber

 

 

Center Karen Kilimnik, Faberge Airlines flight path, 2022, Water soluble oil color and acrylic gemstones on canvas, 45.5 x 35.5 x 2.5 cm / 18 x 14 x 1 in, © Karen Kilimnik, Courtesy the artist and Galerie Eva Presenhuber Right: Karen Kilimnik, the cloud appreciation society meeting, Little stopping by the sea, England, 2021, Water soluble oil color on canvas, diameter: 40.5 cm /,16 in, © Karen Kilimnik, Courtesy the artist and Galerie Eva Presenhuber
Center Karen Kilimnik, Faberge Airlines flight path, 2022, Water soluble oil color and acrylic gemstones on canvas, 45.5 x 35.5 x 2.5 cm / 18 x 14 x 1 in, © Karen Kilimnik, Courtesy the artist and Galerie Eva Presenhuber
Right: Karen Kilimnik, the cloud appreciation society meeting, Little stopping by the sea, England, 2021, Water soluble oil color on canvas, diameter: 40.5 cm /,16 in, © Karen Kilimnik, Courtesy the artist and Galerie Eva Presenhuber

 

 

Karen Kilimnik, the Blue Kiosk, (a small pavillion), the oriental palace stage set, the 18th century, Germany, 2020, Acrylic, china marker, and colored pencil on paper, Sheet 57 x 89 cm / 22 1/2 x 35 in, Frame 91 x 122.5 x 5 cm / 35 7/8 x 48 1/4 x 2 in, © Karen Kilimnik, Courtesy the artist and Galerie Eva Presenhuber
Karen Kilimnik, the Blue Kiosk, (a small pavillion), the oriental palace stage set, the 18th century, Germany, 2020, Acrylic, china marker, and colored pencil on paper, Sheet 57 x 89 cm / 22 1/2 x 35 in, Frame 91 x 122.5 x 5 cm / 35 7/8 x 48 1/4 x 2 in, © Karen Kilimnik, Courtesy the artist and Galerie Eva Presenhuber