"Commingling works from the late 1980s to the near-ish present (the most recent work is from 2013),the show opens with a pair of classical ballet-themed dioramas from 2001 that reproduce scenes from Swan Lake and La Esmeralda,with miniature dancers inhabiting shallow stages flecked with rhinestones and glitter and framed by homespun velvet curtains. Redolent of a school project, the dreamy maquettes are a prelude to the main event upstairs:"
"As with Kilimnik's other scatter pieces of the era, this seemingly haphazard wintry fantasia might best be understood as the flatbed picture plane returned to three dimensions, not so much depicting or narrating or even alluding to a particular subject as approximating the mind's own free-associative wanderings-in this case, the mind of a starry-eyed teenager."
Karen Kilimnik assembles works from the late 1980s through 2013 that juxtapose miniature theatrical dioramas with large-scale scatter installations. Early pieces include 2001 ballet-themed maquettes reproducing Swan Lake and La Esmeralda, featuring rhinestones, glitter, and homespun velvet curtains that evoke school-project charm. A reconstructed scatter piece creates a wintry tableau of artificial snow, fake pine boughs, Pink Panther dolls, candy bars, pointe shoes, plastic deer, and a fondue pot. The scatter installations operate like three-dimensional flatbed images, approximating free-associative mental wanderings associated with adolescent longing. Heathers (1992–93) repurposes the 1988 film into a six-hour, manipulated video by filming a TV monitor.
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