Karen Kilimnik

The Brant Foundation is pleased to loan to the exhibition Karen Kilimnik at Gladstone Gallery

September 45 – November 9, 2025

130 East 64th Street, New York, NY 10065

Press Release: Survey Showcasing Karen Kilimnik’s Decades-Long Engagement with Diverse Media Opens at Gladstone Gallery

Gladstone Gallery presents an exhibition of works by Karen Kilimnik from the late 1980s onward, following the gallery’s presentation of new paintings earlier this year. Surveying Kilimnik’s career-long devotion to diverse media, the exhibition attests to both her central role in the revitalization of painting, as well as to her masterful and genre-transgressing impulse to negate the distance between personal, art historical, and cultural archives. The exhibition is on view September 26 through November 7 at Gladstone’s 64th Street location in New York.

Karen Kilimnik has been a singular and expansive force in contemporary art for more than four decades. From dioramas to mise-en-scène, painted portraits and landscapes, to video, Kilimnik has constructed an immersive and interconnected world, a vision that offers us passage into the environs of our shared cultural fantasies. Her constellation of titles and her rich visual vocabulary reveal a body of work that is both personal and conceptual. Kilimnik’s works of this period seem to confer her complex perspective on the notion of public image, moving between the grandeur of European history and iconography of the contemporary day.

The exhibition will feature rarely seen works including the single-channel video Heathers (1992-93), as well as paintings such as Mary Calling up a Storm (1996), featured in the artist’s 2006 exhibition at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. Reflecting Kilimnik’s pioneering role in constructing environments and sculptures in dialogue with her paintings, works such as Eau de Joy (2005) an artificial bird’s nest incorporating audio and olfactory elements, underscore the breadth and innovation of her practice.

Karen Kilimnik (b.1955, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) studied architecture at Temple University, Philadelphia. Kilimnik’s work has been included in major exhibitions at the Institute of Contemporary Art Philadelphia, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, and Carnegie Museum of Art, among others. Her works are held in leading institutional collections across the U.S. including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, Museum of Modern Art, Carnegie Museum of Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and Whitney Museum of American Art, among others; and international collections including Fondazione Prada, Fondazione Di Vignola, and Statens Museum for Kunst.

Gladstone Gallery is known for its commitment to artists whose prescient approaches and experimental practices have defined the contours of contemporary art. The gallery has long been an active partner in the cultivation of iconoclastic careers, fostering a roster of artists recognized for their ground-breaking contributions. Headquartered in New York and including outposts in both Brussels and Seoul, Gladstone’s impact extends globally, enabling both the presentation of new bodies of work, and an amplification of the international reach of its artists. Alongside its work with contemporary artists, the gallery is steward to the legacies of pivotal historical artists and serves as an advocate for the enduring power of art. Gladstone is led by a team of partners who spearhead its long-term vision and program, building on the values of its founder Barbara Gladstone.