Karen Kilimnik

In the mid-nineties, the American artist Karen Kilimnik emerged as a force—one with a light touch, whose small, gestural canvases and scattered installations embraced girlish materials, such as stickers and glitter, and borrowed imagery from both fashion magazines and art history, with equal ardor. Through June 18, the Eva Presenhuber gallery exhibits dozens of the artist’s wonderful works on paper, with an emphasis on the seventies and eighties, when her signature themes were incubating. In 1977, Kilimnik sketched a “cat burglars club meeting” (seen above), in which young women drink wine while planning a heist. A 1979 ink-and-watercolor portrait of Keith Richards, rumpled and glowering, shows him leaning against the letters of his first name, as if caught in a layout. An expanse of abutting pictures juxtaposes Kilimnik’s 1985 rendition of Judith carrying the head of Holofernes (after Cristofano Allori) with her 1988 crayon sketch of a leggy model riding an escalator, titled “Spying in Berlin.” The diverse works on view are unified by the artist’s inimitable hand and wry humor—and by their lustrous gilt frames, which strike the perfect note of irony, fantasy, and understated camp. (Presenhuber; April 20-June 18.)