ART CITIES:Zurich- Karen Kilimnik

Karen Kilimnik is best known for her collage-based work and installations of objects from popular culture. As part of the Scatter generation that emerged in the ‘90s which included artists such as Felix Gonzalez-Torres and Mike Kelly, Kilimnik created a romantic world that drew on contemporary media, fairy tales, and gothic mysteries.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Galerie Eva Presenhuber Archive

In contrast to the celebrity portraits of Elizabeth Peyton, Kilimnik, blends together Conceptual and performance art and ‘80s appropriation with the current interest in female psychology and identity. Karen Kilimnik has a solo exhibition at Galerie Eva Presenhuber in Zurich. Starting in the ‘90s, Karen Kilimnik has created a large oeuvre of paintings in which she deals with motifs such as romantic mysteries, nature, Baroque, Rococo, fairy tales, and Delftware. Oscillating between magic worlds, unspoiled nature and the intuition that both could be merely a facade, Kilimnik’s motifs feel familiar. Her landscapes play with references to precursors. In “The Egerton House Hotel”, for example, she refers to Giorgione’s (Giorgio Barbarelli da Castelfranco) painting “Landscape with sunset” (1506-10). Depicting Giorgione’s composition, Kilimnik removes the figures and instead inserts furniture from The Egerton House Hotel in London. In doing so, she changes the landscape from one to only look at into one that seems to invite the viewer to take a seat. The juxtaposition of inside and outside, contemporary and history draws through Kilimnik’s landscapes. In “The Tempest Room”, it is as if one can sit inside, with all the respective comforts and still enjoy the pleasures of the nature outside. In “The Gypsies lost in the mountain forest storm”, painted after George Hyter, Kilimnik has changed the original inhabitants. “Zermatt at night”, is partly reminiscent of a scene taken from the The Beatles movie “Help”, are skiing down the alps with torches. Like the hut in “Hiding out in the cold winter Polish countryside, the old country“, after a painting by Jacob von Ruisdael, the landscape in these paintings is so familiar that Kilimnik’s phantasy of taking shelter in nature becomes accessible for everyone.

Info: Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Löwenbräu Areal, Limmatstr. 270, Zurich, Duration: 8/4-27/5/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri 11:00-18:00, Sat 11:00-17:00, www.presenhuber.com