CIRCA online review
This
is the second of our online reviews - intended specifically
for recirca.com. For more information on these reviews, click
here.
Karen Kilimnik:
Fairy Battle, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, September
27, 2002, to February 2, 2003
One of the things Karen Kilmnik's
Fairy Battle installation at IMMA does, because of
her extreme take on form and content, is separate the...
The what? Getting a handle on an answer
to that may be what is radical about the show. For some, this
will be one of the best shows of the year; for others it may
prove to be something of a no-go area. Both responses may
operate simultaneously.
The work is an animated representation
of the artist's interior life; all her wishes, dreams and
desires are gathered here: ballerinas, charming fairies, wistful
photos of snow scenes, over-the-top velvety paintings of flowers,
spangly horses and... It's about here the split occurs.
 |
| Karen
Kilimnik: Planning the Attack of Malta, the Mastermind,
2001; water soluble oil colour on canvas and audio cassette,
20 x 16 inches; courtesy 303 Gallery, NY/IMMA; ©
Karen Kilimnik |
This feels like shopping. Can we
agree to meet up later in the Hardware Department?
Kilmnik presses the Warholian envelope;
but now it is not just popular imagery...Elvis, the soup cans,
the Brillo boxes - when presented with technical and formal
panache, that can acquit as art; it is that the signs of 'kitsch',
technical awkwardness and formal ineptitude, may similarly
signify as art.
Does anyone care any more about
what 'art' is? Does nobody get it about the Readymade?
Kilminick
advances Duchamp's contextual insight, turning up the heat
by bringing, not just the outside inside, but by bringing
what is bad art from the outside, inside - to be authenticated
there - as 'good' art.
Wasn't that the eighties? Trying
to tell the good 'bad painting' from the bad 'bad painting.'
And don't only Germans care about that?
A major achievement of Kilminick's
work is how it introduces 'sincerity' as a viable emotion.
Not exactly Rousseau-for-our-times, but this gentle redress
to the brittle ironies of so much contemporary art disarms
the viewer, transporting us back to blameless times, when
the very signs of our halting attempts to get at an essential
understanding of things were sufficient of themselves to constitute
ephipanies.
Sincerity! Suicides are sincere.
Have you read the notes they leave? Guilt.
There's guilt here. For some reason,
my not liking this, is making me feel guilty. Children can
do this to you. Neglect.
This
artist, however, is no out-of-control casualty of an uncaring
world.
 |
| Karen
Kilimnik: The Evening Fairy Alights at Bedroom Window,
2002; laser print, glitter and archival glue, 11 x 17
inches; courtesy 303 Gallery, NY/IMMA; © Karen Kilimnik |
There
is joy here and a knowingness and guile that will go the distance.
She orchestrates the prestigious setting; painting walls exotic
colours to valorise tiny pictures which are further enhanced
by chandeliers hung on either side.
The word 'banal' keep insisting
itself. This is banal.
Seldom
has banality had a more passionate advocate. Her velvet-gloved,
steely ambition supports an extravagant journey through the
febrilities and poignancies of cherished mementoes, transforming
the familiar and the simple into complex meditations on 'familiar'
as a spirit of place, an apparition. The banal as site of
the marvellous.
 |
| Karen
Kilimnik, Ragley Hall-Tour of England, 2000, water
soluble oilcolour on canvas, 14 x 18 inches; courtesy
303 Gallery, NY/IMMA; © Karen Kilimnik |
I'm only getting the 'steely ambition'
component?
Not
everyone can engage with this domain. Some will feel an instinctive,
emotional response that allows them to navigate easily in
this enchanted world, using Kilimnick's visual cues to embellish
and extend their rich, near-primal, sympathies.
Is this a nature/nurture issue?
I never got Peter Pan. Ever. What a wimp. I couldn't wait
to grow up.
Others
will feel alienated, repelled.
I have seldom felt so offside.
Have you thought much about ye olde offside rule, Karen? It's
fascinating. Diamond and Christmas Tree formations. O, it's
exclusively beautiful. And pointless. Can you dig it, Karen?
If
a social role for art is to interrogate the inequities of
the status quo; to modify set consciousness; to redress past
hegemonies and illuminate the unseen, then Kilimnick's world
can expose inimical cultural constructs, clenched mindsets
and two-dimensional, cartoonlike responses.
Doh!
Noel Sheridan is an artist
who works in a variety of media.
