Karen Kilimnik & Kim Gordon

The artist meets musician collaboration is not new, but this latest show at New York’s 303 Gallery promises to add a punk inspired edge to the usual experience. Painter and installation artist Karen Kilimnik and legendary Sonic Youth front-woman Kim Gordon have known each other for years, but this month they embark on their first experience as artistic associates, both creating video works, paintings and installations that explore the art of performance from their alternate experiences. Kilimnik’s film piece, titled “Bananarama Guilty” uses found interview and concert footage of the 80s band to consider the relationship and necessary distance between artist and audience, while Gordon’s work places herself at its heart, as she and a female counterpart play guitars, dressed in Rodarte, in a repossession of the rock & roll gestures traditionally reserved for male rock stars. As the show opens in New York, here we speak to the two artists about how they first met, their working process and the high points of their summer.

Can you describe the first time you met each other?
Karen Kilimnik: In Lisa Spellman's office at 303 Gallery in Soho. She was with her little baby girl Coco.
Kim Gordon: I think it was at an Ana Sui fashion show and she was about to meet Kate Moss.

How would you describe the working process of this collaboration?
KK: Wonderful and fun.
KG: Transcendent, like the show installed itself.

Kim Gordon: "The working process of this collaboration was...transcendent, like the show installed itself."

What do you enjoy most about working with each other?
KG: She’s oblique.

If you were to describe each other in one word what would it be?
KK: Fabulous.
KG: Like a renegade princess.

What was your highlight of your summer?
KK: Reading all the great comments on the GMO Free American and Canadian Facebook pages. And wearing my new Anti-GMO t-shirt and hanging around the cereal isle in the supermarkets to tell people about GMOs and evil Monsanto.
KG: Sleeping in a tent in Malibu in a double bed.

If you could own one artwork in the world, what would it be?
KK: The Winged Victory of Samorathe.
KG: Maybe one of Lucio Fontana’s cut paintings.

Which artist, alive or dead, would you like to have dinner with?
KK: John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Ringo and George. 
KG: The filmmaker Catherine Breillat.

Karen Kilimnik & Kim Gordon is at 303 Gallery until September 29.