Sunday in the Park with the Art Crowd

With its acres of grass, bounteous buffet, and assorted beautiful people (Dan Colen, Stephanie Seymour, Stavros Niarchos) all dressed in their Sunday Best, The Brant Foundation’s Karen Kilimnik opening yesterday in Greenwich, Connecticut was so lovely an affair that even the artist, a notorious recluse, couldn’t resist its lure. “It’s a whole not nicer than Manhattan,” she said, surveying the crowd from the lawn.

Running through September, the exhibition, housed in a converted stone barn, was inspired by Peter Brant’s personal collection of Kilimnik’s work, which dates back some thirty years. Many of the pieces, such as her 1989 breakout installation “The Hellfire Club Episode of the Avengers”—a mise-en-scene of photos, xeroxes, and props based on the 1960s British television series—are familiar to Kilimnik fans. Others, however, less so. “Fountain of Youth,” an early installation that the artist was never able to fully realize until recently, consists of large box hedges, rose bushes, strewn perfume bottles, and a Parisian fountain that all but rivaled the idyllic environs outside. “It was the perfect place for it,” said Kilimnik.

Click here to see more photos from the event by Alexis Dahan.

Photo: Kilimnik, Alexis Dahan; Fernandez, Karin Nelson