Karen Kilimnik

The Institute of Contemporary Art is pleased to present the first American survey for Karen Kilimnik (b. 1957, Philadelphia). Drawing correspondences between romantic tradition and consumer culture, Kilimnik's work brings a haunting and contrary sense of beauty to contemporary art. The world of the ballet and childhood, romantic painting and pop music, icons of film and fashion, signs of witchcraft, time-travel, and murder comprise an imagery that has been culled from the historic and recent past into an unsettling present. In a world where the forces of nature, youth, and terror, have taken awesome hold, Kilimnik's art rematerializes a quest for the romantic sublime.




Occupying both the ICA's main gallery spaces, the survey was selected by the curator with the artist, who typically approaches the exhibition of her work as a form of theatrical mis-en-scene. For this installation, Kilimnik specified the first floor galleries appear almost empty except for a discrete chamber where her paintings are installed salon style on red walls—a romantic museum framed by the modern architecture. This exhibition spans fifteen years of painting, drawings, assemblage sculptures, installation, photographs and video. Curated by Ingrid Schaffner, ICA Senior Curator, this exhibition is accompanied by a catalog publication and will be on view April 20 - August 5, 2007.