- Like all the other artists you have sold on Fair Warning thus far, Kilimnik has shied away from the art world, leading a rather introverted life outside of New York (Way to pick some Socially Distant artists) - She is an environmentalist, her favorite animal is “anything in the cat family,” and she has painted Leonardo DiCaprio (Should have been a Kilimnik in 11th Hour !!!) - This particular work comes from a group of paintings created in 1999 known as the Me paintings, where (similar to Cindy Sherman) Kilimnik casts her own likeness as both real and imaginary figures in her own paintings - Often known for clever titles that reframe the narrative of her paintings. Roberta Smith has characterized this particular piece as a “caught-in-a-lie title” - She is known for creating fairly disparate works that when unified bring together history, popular culture, fashion, mythology and the occult in a way that suggests that all elements of our past and present are constantly relevant in our lives.

The Artist 303 Gallery, New York Private Collection

New York, 303 Gallery, "Karen Kilmnik," February 6 - March 20, 1999.

Smith, Roberta, "Art in Review: Karen Kilmnik," The New York Times, February 12, 1999. Moreno, Gean, "High Noon on Desire Country," Art Papers Magazine, March/April, 2000, illustrated, pp. 31-32. Borrelli-Persson, Laird, "Meet One of Marc Jacob's Favorite Artists, the Starry-Eyed Painter Karen Kilmnik," Vogue, November 13, 2019.

Executed in 1999 for her self-titled show at 303 Gallery, Me Waiting for my Drug Dealer Boyfriend… Park Avenue… oops… forgot - the Village, 1967, belongs to a group of Me paintings and photographs wherein the artist incorporates her own likeness cast simultaneously as both real and imagined characters. Set against an eerie—almost spectral—yellow backdrop the self-referential figure clad in knee-high boots and a black trench confronts the viewer head-on, locking her deep, soul-bearing eyes with the voyeur beyond the picture plane. In fact, Roberta Smith has characterized this jewel-like canvas as a “painting of an eminently 90’s fashion model” with a “caught-in-a-lie title” (R. Smith, “Art in Review: Karen Kilimnik,” The New York Times, February 1999, accessed at https://www.nytimes.com/1999/02/12/arts/art-in-review-karen-kilimnik.html) Evoking Cindy Sherman’s self-starring “girl in trouble” and Elizabeth Peyton’s lexicon of sumptuously colored, brushy pop stars, Kilimnik’s Me paintings of the late 1990s, implement an artistic approach that borrows directly from historic and current cultural imagery, while reshaping the suggested narratives into a story that is uniquely her own. In fact, as Laird Borrelli-Perrson of Vogue explains, this has long been characteristic of the artist’s work: “The art world first fell in love with Kilimnik in the 1980s, particularly with her scratchy drawings of fashionable people like Kate Moss, Brigitte Bardot, and the like. If the depictions are PG or maybe PG-13, the narratives veer from PG to rated R. Kilimnik sketches in pencil on paper, paints in oil on canvas, takes photographs, makes collages, and bejewels store-bought puzzles. But no matter the medium, her clever titles—such as Me Waiting for My Drug Dealer Boyfriend...Park Avenue...oops...Forgot...the Village, 1967—reframe the image, often in a way that disorients the viewer’s sense of time or context” (L. Borrelli-Persson, “Meet One of Marc Jacobs’s Favorite Artists, the Starry-Eyed Painter Karen Kilimnik,” Vogue, November 2019, accessed at https://www.vogue.com/slideshow/profile-of-artist-karen-kilimnik) Kilimnik has long been interested in combining historical grandeur with contemporary iconography culled from high and popular culture to create her own psychologically intriguing reality through enchanting paintings that weave together history, myth and fantasy. Kilimnik has often been described as “[loving] eras – the 1960s, the 1890s and the 1780s. She loves Russia, Russian ballet and the Russian Tea room. She loves sparkly things such as snow and glitter and chandeliers; loves the shadows in empty drawing rooms and the twilight haze in the forest. She loves fairy tales and Leonardo DiCaprio and whatever things offer themselves up to be loved: dogs, ponies and famous pretty faces…” (S. Stern, “the Uses of Enchantment,” Frieze, issue 81, 2004, p. 66). Known early in her career as a “scatter artist,” Kilimnik’s output seemingly rampages through various styles and periods, implementing conflicting levels of fact, fiction and fantasy. However, her constant flurry of disparate narratives—often exhibited salon-style, or as she refers to it “Petersburger Style”—weave an interlocking web that suggests all elements of meaning are constantly in play—continuously being shaken and stirred by our thoughts, flowing in and out of our memories.