Mike Kelley (artist)

Mike Kelley
Photo by Cameron Wittig courtesy Walker Art Center
Born	October 27, 1954 Wayne, Michigan, U.S.
Died	c. February 1, 2012(2012-02-01) (aged 57) South Pasadena, California, U.S.
Field	sculpture, installation, performance
Awards	Wolfgang Hahn Prize 2006 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship 2003 The California Institute of the Arts Distinguished Alumnus Award 2000
Website	mikekelley.com

Michael "Mike" Kelley (October 27, 1954 – January 31, 2012 or February 1, 2012) was an American artist. His work involved found objects, textile banners, drawings, assemblage, collage, performance and video. He often worked collaboratively and had produced projects with artists Paul McCarthy, Tony Oursler and John Miller.

Life and work

Kelley was born in Wayne, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit in 1954. In his early years he was involved with the city's music scene which spawned bands such as Iggy and the Stooges, Kelley was a member of the noise band Destroy All Monsters. In 1976 Kelley graduated from the University of Michigan. He moved to Los Angeles in 1978 and attended the California Institute of the Arts, where he admired the work of his teachers John Baldessari, Laurie Anderson, David Askevold and Douglas Huebler. At that time he started to work on a series of projects in which he explored works with loose poetic themes, such as The Sublime, Monkey Island and Plato's Cave, Rothko's Chapel, Lincoln's Profile, using a variety of different media such as drawing, painting, sculpture, performance and writing. Kelley started to gain recognition outside Los Angeles in the mid-eighties with the sculptural objects and installations from the series Half-a-Man and has since exhibited in galleries and museums worldwide^{[citation needed]} and participated in events such as Documenta 9. Sonic Youth featured his work on the cover and booklet of their 1992 record Dirty. The Whitney Museum in New York City held a major retrospective of his work in 1993.

In November 2005, Kelley staged Day is Done, filling Gagosian Gallery with funhouse-like multimedia installations, including automated furniture, as well as films of dream-like ceremonies inspired by high school year book photos of pageants, sports matches and theater productions. In December 2005, Village Voice art critic Jerry Saltz described "Day is Done" as a pioneering example of "clusterfuck aesthetics," the tendency towards overloaded multimedia environments in contemporary art.

Kelley was also in the band Poetics with fellow California Institute of the Arts students John Miller and Tony Oursler.^{[citation needed]}

Kelley's work was inspired by diverse sources such as history, philosophy, politics, underground music, decorative arts and working-class artistic expression. His art often examined class and gender issues as well as issues of normality, criminality and perversion.^{[citation needed]}

Kelley was found dead in an apparent suicide in 2012.

A selection of representative works

• "Mike Kelley at Skarstedt", 2010
• "Haim Steinbach on Mike Kelley" at Overduin and Kite, 2008
• "Mike Kelley's Proposal for the Decoration of an Island of Conference Rooms (with Copy Room) for an Advertising Agency Designed by Frank Gehry", 1992, Public Art
• "Heidi", 1992, Video (in collaboration with Paul McCarthy)
• "Pay for Your Pleasure", 1988, Installation
• "Half-a-Man", 1987–91, Series of objects, drawings and installations

Contributions

• 2008 Life on Mars, the 2008 Carnegie International [3]

External links

• Official site
• Biography, interviews, essays, artwork images and video clips from PBS series Art:21 -- Art in the Twenty-First Century - Season 1 (2001).
• Mike Kelley at Gagosian Gallery
• "Tomorrow Never Comes" Steven Stern on Kelley, Frieze, March, 2006
• Daniel Sherer, “Heidi on the Loos. Ornament and Crime in Mike Kelley and Paul McCarthy’s Heidi.” PIN-UP 3 (2008), 59-62.
• Mike Kelley biography/interview
• Mike Kelley is a member of Project X Foundation for Art and Criticism, publisher of X-TRA
• "I Want My Mike Kelley" by Ben Davis, Artnet Magazine
• "Clusterfuck Aesthetics" by Jerry Saltz, Artnet Magazine
• Mike Kelley and the Conceptual Vernacular
• Exhibitions and works at Jablonka Galerie