In Karen Kilimnik’s upcoming exhibition at 303 Gallery, the artist presents a series of new Me paintings and photographs with titles such as Me, Corner of Haight & Ashbury, 1966, Me at the Ranch Waiting for Charlie, 1968, and Me in Russia-1916, Outside the Village. In these works, she presents likenesses of herself in the guise of characters, both real and imagined.
For each identity that she appropriates, the artist assumes some point of similarity between herself and a chosen character, some base/essence from which she can extrapolate yet another version of herself. This point of similarity allows her to draw freely from her own biography in an oblique way, rewriting several different histories for herself. Karen Kilimnik continues the use of an artistic process that borrows directly from current cultural imagery, and reshapes the suggested narratives into a story that is all her own.
Also in the exhibition are paintings of an English house (where the Rolling Stones were raided for drugs) and the interior of a chateau (a possible Avengers set) along with leading men (such as Jonathan Rhys Meyers from the film Velvet Goldmine), all of which round out this extended biography .