Karen Kilimnik
March 11–April 23, 2011
Opening:
Friday, March 11, 6-8pm
547 W 21st Street
New York, NY 10011
T 212 255 1121
F 212 255 5563
303 Gallery is pleased to present our tenth exhibition of work by Karen Kilimnik.
For this occasion, Kilimnik will show her influential 1989 installation “The Hellfire Club episode of the Avengers.” A mise-en-scene based on the 1960s British television series “The Avengers,” the installation is an arrangement of xeroxes, photographs and props framed by velvet curtains and two impenetrably black drawings of British manor houses. Several nearly life-size photocopies of the stars of The Avengers (Emma Peel and John Steed) are part of the tableau, as if bringing the episode to life. Gold frames, mirrors, cobwebs, swords, an ax; these elements combine with a pea, The Beatles, and other stereotypically British imagery, forming the artist’s own portrait of the already artificial tenets that made the television show so engaging. For this new version of the piece, the artist has recreated the soundtrack, using edited snippets of Haydn, Johann Christian Bach, the Surfin’ Safaris, Madonna, Arthur Brown, the Rolling Stones, and incidental sounds of clinking chandelier crystals. The newly remade soundtrack increases greatly the clarity of the sound itself, as well as its amplified interaction with the other installation elements. Also included in the show are photographs of another re-installation of the Hellfire Club, with an actress spookily reminiscent of Emma Peel, adding even another layer of the crossover between artifice and real life. As if going back in time, Kilimnik is able to introduce new forms of clarity through this uniquely refracted perspective.
In addition to “The Hellfire Club episode of the Avengers,” Kilimnik will be showing new photographs that reference tendencies in her paintings, including “my walk in woods at night,” an eerie image of the moon peeking through a shadowy forest, bearing remarkably evocative similarity to her own iconic scenario imagined in “the swampy forest at night” from 2006. “Dirty Snow / Oscar de la Renta gown,” a photograph of half-melted and refrozen snow mixed with tar and street grime is another image hearkening back to her paintings, textures and colors mixing together into an amorphous form somehow more evocative than the real thing. Along with new paintings and drawings from the same era as “The Hellfire Club episode of the Avengers,” Kilimnik shifts between genres to similarly unspecific, redolent ends. By sharing her own very personal responses to the world, Kilimnik creates mnemonic invites to ambrosial worlds and magnified realities.
Karen Kilimnik created an intervention at the Belvedere Museum in Vienna and opened a solo show at Galeria Il Capricornio, Venice in 2010. She was featured in the 2008 Whitney Museum of American Art Biennial and in 2007 she had a career survey exhibition at the ICA Philadelphia, PA which was also on view at the Moca North Miami, Florida, The Aspen Art Museum, CO, and the MCA Chicago. An exhibition catalogue including texts by Ingrid Schaffner, Scott Rothkopf and Dominic Molon was published in conjunction with this exhibition. In 2007 Kilimnik had solo shows at Le Consortium, Dijon, France, and the Serpentine Gallery, London, UK for which she created her first ballet titled “sleeping beauty + friends” which was performed in London. In 2006, Kilimnik exhibited at the Musee d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, France and had her first monograph published by JPR Ringier. In Fall 2011, Kilimnik will be designing sets for a new production by the Paris Opera.
303 Gallery represents the work of Doug Aitken, Laylah Ali, Valentin Carron, Anne Chu, Inka Essenhigh, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Ceal Floyer, Karel Funk, Maureen Gallace, Tim Gardner, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Rodney Graham, Mary Heilmann, Jeppe Hein, Karen Kilimnik, Florian Maier-Aichen, Nick Mauss, Mike Nelson, Kristin Oppenheim, Djordje Ozbolt, Eva Rothschild, Collier Schorr, Stephen Shore, Sue Williams, and Jane and Louise Wilson.
For further information please visit us at www.303gallery.com or contact Lisa Spellman, Mari Spirito or Barbara Corti.
