No artist better connects the 1980s, its impact on the present, and the opulence, decadence, and crisis of democratic systems in the West than Karen Kilimnik, who lives and works in Philadelphia. Her artistic practice encompasses painting, photography, writing, and assemblage, intertwining art history, popular culture, fashion, and literature. Her works feature recognizable images, romantic landscapes, aristocratic figures, and pop icons that are reinterpreted in new worlds that question the construction of identity and desire. Her paintings, often naïve and seemingly simple, destabilize visual hierarchies. Her assemblages reaffirm the relevance of display as an opportunity to create a situation that hints at a narrative dimension.
Cadabra presents a selection of works ranging from the 1980s to Kilimnik's most recent productions, focusing on magic as a central tool and alphabet in her language. For Kilimnik, magic is an aesthetic and narrative device capable of producing autonomous, enchanted realities — true as long as fiction allows. The word, present in the early drawings and in the long titles of the paintings, functions as a spell that transfigures common images.
Magic is remaking and embellishment, but also a challenge to the opposition between authenticity and fiction. The artist emphasizes repetition and replication, often with slight variations, revealing the vulnerability of images and demonstrating that the same representations can operate on different levels, including narrative ones. This reveals the ways in which desire is produced. Kilimnik's artistic practice spreads throughout the exhibition space.
Through a combination of painting, furniture, and decoration, the artist creates immersive environments and complex scenes — other worlds.
This exhibition is part of Passaggi: di mano in mano, the Centro Pecci’s 2026 cultural programme. Discover the programme ↗
