Drawing correspondences between romantic tradition and contemporary culture, Karen Kilimnik's works realize a quest for a fairytale sublime. The diverse realms of history, architecture, art, fashion, film and television, music and ballet, animals and landscape, science and literature create an imagery that has been selected from stories both historic and fictional, bringing these observations into the present. In a world where the forces of nature have taken awesome hold, Kilimnik's work brings a haunting and contrary sense of beauty to contemporary art.
"In Kilimnik’s realm, time, history, and images themselves are all fictions ready to be disrupted and replayed—and a sense of liberty is on display for the taking."
-Mira Dancy, excerpted from Best of 2016: The Artists' Artists, Artforum, December 2016.
“Collage is the cut-and-paste of modern art, the copy-and-drag of the digital everyday, and Kilimnik deploys it in a spectrum of ways. She transforms animals and architecture into dramatic subjects... to create a real world of artifice and illusion.”
-Ingrid Schaffner, excepted from “Karen Kilimnik,” in Carnegie International 57th Edition 2018: The Guide, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, 2018.
