Mike Kelley American, 1948-2012
Overview
Satan's Nostrils From the series “Pansy Metal/Clovered Hoof”, 1989
"My interest in popular forms wasn't to glorify them, because I really dislike popular culture in most cases. All you can do now, I think, is work with this dominant culture and flay it, rip it apart, reconfigure it." -- MIKE KELLEY
Mike Kelley was a groundbreaking American artist whose multidisciplinary practice reshaped contemporary art. Born in suburban Detroit and later based in Los Angeles, Kelley worked across sculpture, installation, performance, video, painting, drawing, photography, sound, music, and writing—challenging distinctions between high and low culture.
Over his thirty-five year career, he worked in every conceivable medium - drawings on paper, sculpture, performance, music, video, photography, and painting - exploring themes as diverse as American class relations, sexuality, repressed memory, systems of religion and transcendence, and post-punk politics, to which he brought both incisive critique and abundant, self-deprecating humor.
Mike Kelley received the Skowhegan Medal in Mixed Media, and two grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. Major solo exhibitions include Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; Tate Liverpool; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; and Kunsthalle, Basel; among others. Kelley lived and worked in Los Angeles, where he passed away in February 2012.
Works
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© Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts. All Rights Reserved / VAGA at ARS, NY Douglas M. Parker Studio, Los Angeles Unlucky Clover (from series "Pansy Metal/Clovered Hoof") , 1989 -
Emerald Eyehole - From the Series «Pansey metal/ Clovered Hoof», 1989
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Hangin’ - Heavy - Hairy-Horny - From the Series «Pansey metal/Clovered Hoof», 1989
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Satan's Nostrils From the series “Pansy Metal/Clovered Hoof”, 1989
Press
Exhibitions
