NEW YORK, NY.- Karen Kilimnik’s (b. 1955, Philadelphia) debut exhibition with Gladstone Gallery opens January 16 in New York, featuring the artist’s radical, fantasy compositions of tropical beaches, coastal landscapes and floral forests. The exhibition brings together 18 of the artist’s paintings created between 2008 and 2024.

Kilimnik’s paintings meld Raoul Dufy’s lively and luminous paintings of seaside vistas and regattas with the seductive allure of travel brochures and Biggles English adventure stories.

In one of the glittering seascapes there is the strange sight of Sopwith camels circling above while submarines lurk offshore. Proving not only that this place never did and never will exist, but also that these paintings are spells that form a kind of magic.

Representing a kind of nomadism of the mind, the places Kilimnik depicts— including “kaleidoscopic gardens” and verdant views of the English countryside—offer respite, and diversion. Ultimately, in one way these are also partly protest paintings — representatives of many people’s dislike and unappreciation of the Orwellian past 5 years of censorship, propaganda and lack of freedom of speech and assembly, freedom of movement, and bodily autonomy.

Karen Kilimnik (b.1955, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) studied art and architecture at Temple University, Philadelphia. Kilimnik’s work has been included in major exhibitions at the Institute of Contemporary Art Philadelphia, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, and Carnegie Museum of Art, among others. Her works are held in leading institutional collections across the U.S. including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, Museum of Modern Art, Carnegie Museum of Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and Whitney Museum of American Art, among others; and international collections including Fondazione Prada, Fondazione Di Vignola, and Statens Museum for Kunst.