303 Gallery is pleased to present our ninth exhibition of work by Karen Kilimnik. Paintings and photographs reflect her concern with the natural world, and her expansion of historical landscape painting. Subtle interventions into the exhibition space with diamond dust on the walls and crystal chandeliers orient the viewer to the great outdoors.

Karen Kilimnik’s ocean, sky and mountain paintings are minimally executed and their titles refer to moments in time and/or places. Kilimnik’s date paintings’ range from specific times in early 18th century, as in “A Summer Day, 1763” an airy blue tondo, to the more general “Summer Zephyr” a cool atmospheric painting (above). “neptune’s home” and “the sea” imagine the ocean as it would appear to one of Neptune’s mermaids looking up from the watery depth’s below, recording an abstract ‘decisive moment’. In certain works Kilimnik’s titles radically re-contextualize her image, as in “the Sahara Desert at night”, a loose gestural painting of a blue and lavender mountain peak.

In a series of photographs, Kilimnik investigates the sinister environmental threats of global warming. ‘my neighborhood tropical clouds’ and ‘new jersey tropical clouds’ were made on the artist’s way back to her home in Philadelphia from New York, and are evidence to her understanding that the greenhouse effect is visible in cloud formations. The clouds in Kilimnik’s Northeast photographs are similar to those in the tropics, not normally observed in North America, turning the viewer’s contemplation to the future.

Karen Kilimnik will be in the 2008 Whitney Museum of American Art Biennial. In 2007 she had one-person exhibitions at the ICA Philadelphia, PA which was also on view at the Moca North Miami, Florida, currently at The Aspen Art Museum, CO, and opens at the MCA Chicago in February of 2008, with an exhibition catalogue including texts by Ingrid Schaffner, Scott Rothkopf and Dominic Molon. 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 2005, Kilimnik had concurrent exhibitions at the Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa, Venice, Italy, during the Venice Biennial, and at the Haus zum Kirschgarten, Historisches Museum Basel, Switzerland. An artist book published by Patrick Frey was created for the Haus zum Kirschgarten.