A small canvas can hold a great longing: a hotel room, a glimpse of landscape, a flower that seems to point beyond everyday life towards another world. In Karen Kilimnik’s work, such images are rarely mere escapes. They remind us that ideas of beauty and belonging have long been rehearsed through images – through fairy-tale illustrations and court painting as much as through ballet, fashion and film.
Her exhibition at the Kunstverein in Hamburg opens on 6 November; its regular run is from 7 November 2026 to 28 February 2027. Alongside it, Centro Pecci in Prato is presenting a separate exhibition, coordinated with Hamburg but independent in its approach: ‘ABRACADABRA’ opens there on 21 November and runs until 29 March 2027. The Kunstverein promises a survey spanning several decades and various media, including oil paintings, works on paper and mise-en-scène – staged spatial arrangements. In Prato, installations, paintings, photographs and drawings are to be brought together.
An Archive Full of Longing
Kilimnik has worked with painting, drawing, collage, photography, video and installation since the late 1970s. Her visual sources range from Baroque and earlier courtly traditions to landscape painting, pop culture, fashion and film. These motifs do not appear as neatly labelled art-historical quotations. Rather, they emerge as familiar visual formulas that overlap: a romantic place, a promise of elegance, a fantasy of status.
A look at her works reveals their breadth. ‘a world of perfection, the hotel de Paris, Monte Carlo’ (2015) is a small oil painting on canvas; ‘home of the dewdrop fairy’ (1998) conjures a fairy realm in its very title. Galerie Eva Presenhuber also documents more recent works in which painting is combined with acrylic, photographic prints or glittering materials. The spectrum ranges from quiet landscapes to deliberately artificial seduction. The exhibition information available so far does not provide a complete account of the specific works that Hamburg and Prato will show.
Glamour as a Promise
Looking at Kilimnik’s images of fairy tales and high society can be understood as an enquiry into glamour. Here, glamour means not just lustre, but a power over appearances: who is allowed to be visible? What way of life is considered desirable? And who remains outside the image that promises success, beauty or romantic fulfilment?
These questions do not simply make the world of desire the opposite of reality. A fairy tale can offer comfort while also enshrining a social order; an image of high society can entice with elegance while supplying the rules of belonging. In Kilimnik’s work, such promises meet images drawn from different periods and media. Their very familiarity can be unsettling: we recognise the longing before we know whom it benefits.
The two exhibitions provide a fitting framework for exploring this tension. Hamburg announces the artist’s first survey exhibition in Germany for more than 25 years; with the title ‘ABRACADABRA’, Prato places the emphasis on the idea of art as a magical filter through which to view the glamour and tragedy of US culture. What each selection makes of this will only become clear in the galleries themselves. The guiding question is already there: are Kilimnik’s images of desire places of refuge – or maps of a belonging that is not open to everyone?
Original reviewed by the editors · 3 November 2026
