Karen Kilimnik

KAREN KILIMNIK
The Joker Episode of The Avengers (1991)
Booth U50

This environment from the 1990s illustrates the breadth of Kilimnik’s approach to sculpture, as well as her early, inventive use of space and stage setting. Part of a group of works based on the popular 1960s British television series The Avengers, Kilimnik’s The Joker Episode of the Avengers (1991) re-presents one of the show’s particularly surreal and tense episodes. Mrs. Peel (played famously by actress Diana Rigg) is lured to a bridge champion’s home, only to find he is an escaped vicious criminal she had helped to capture, and who now enacts his revenge by putting her through a series of deadly trials and tricks. Each facet of Kilimnik’s sculptural environment—giant playing cards, cut-up images of Emma Peel, packs of Pall Mall cigarettes, dozens of strewn silk and paper roses, and a soundtrack edited from the episode and its signature song, Mein Liebling, Mein Rose— reflects not only specific elements taken directly from the narrative, but also alludes to the style of the sixties and our impressions of that era. Immersive and playful, The Joker Episode of the Avengers demonstrates Kilimnik’s evocative manipulation of space, as well as her admiration for the work of Rigg, actor Patrick Macnee, and screenwriter and producer Brian Clemens. Co-presented with Sprüth Magers. 

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