Karen Kilimnik – Paintings

After celebrating the desire for fame, the hunger for sex and drugs, the adoration of models, designer clothes, thoroughbred horses and dogs in her delirious and fast-paced large-format book Drawings, Karen Kilimnik explores a new approach, both glamorous and subversive, to her signature motifs in Paintings, her second book published by Edition Patrick Frey:

It presents 70 delicate miniature paintings from the last five years. A romantic and melodramatic yearning colors her views of English manor houses and cursed fairy-tale castles. Empathetically, she portrays three angora cats as if they were the three Graces. Her exotic ducks remind us of Géricault’s hens. Her painting of a falcon looks like a commission by the emir of Quatar. Passionately, she paints butterflies, swirling through the night. Time and again, she returns to the old legend of the price that fame and beauty purportedly exact. In a brilliant triptych, Princess Diana leaves the Ritz for the last time. Leonardo di Caprio smiles boyishly, whereas Kate Moss is feeling up the crotch of her blue jeans. A moon, veiled by clouds, is shining behind decoratively barren trees. Candles burning in the park at night: Was it a cheerful birthday party, or rather a dark ritual?