Mike Kelley
dal 1/11/2002 al 7/12/2002
Segnalato da
1/11/2002
Mike Kelley
Metro Pictures, New York
Mike Kelley's new painting and sculpture at Metro Pictures continues his confrontation with "repressed memory syndrome" as it relates to his own art and personal history. The work results from the absurd and obsessive mining of the artist's past, as he recalls details of his childhood, reconstructs locations and recycles materials of prior projects.
Reversals, Recyclings, Completions, and Late Additions
2 November  7 December, 2002
Reception 2 November 6-8 pm
Mike Kelley's new painting and sculpture at Metro Pictures continues his
confrontation with "repressed memory syndrome" as it relates to his own
art and personal history. The work results from the absurd and obsessive
mining of the artist's past, as he recalls details of his childhood,
reconstructs locations and recycles materials of prior projects. In its
comic futility, the work is both diversely unpredictable and rigorously
logical.
"A Continuous Screening of Bob Clarks's Film Porky's(1981), the Soundtrack
of Which Has Been Replaced with Morton Subotnick's Electronic Composition
The Wild Bull(1968), and Presented in the Secret Sub-Basement of the
Gymnaxium Locker Room" is a walk-in wood structure configured to resemble
office cubicles where recycled floor plans, architectural sketches and
working drawings from his "Educational Complex" are mounted on the walls.
"Educational Complex", which he showed at Metro Pictures in 1995, is an
architectural model composed of replicas of every school Kelley attended,
with areas he couldn't remember left blank. The title of this piece is
drawn from notes on some of the school floor plans describing "recovered
memories" of events that took place in the various "repressed" spaces.
"Concretized Negative Space", a series of black blocks on a table-like base,
revisits the forgotten rooms of "Educational Complex". A black "gravy"
flows over the boxes into surrounding puddles of dark "forgetfulness". A
mobile-like piece, based on Kelley's first tentative sketches of the school
buildings, uses blocks that approximate remembered chunks of architecture
individually suspended from the ceiling, their physical relationships
remaining shifting and provisional.
The exhibition includes several "Memory Ware Flats" that are part of a
series Kelley began in 2000 that reference the folk tradition of decorating
the surface of common objects, such as vases, frames, and boxes, with a
variety of recycled trinkets. Kelley's mosaic-like paintings are composed
of large panels with a three-dimensional surface embedded with bright metal
and colorful beads, pins, buttons, charms, and pendants. Another sculpture
consists of a large velvet-lined jewelry case in which Kelley displays a
vast number of particularly representative trinkets originally gathered for
use in the Memory Ware pieces, and now arranged in a continuous line
organized according to ever-morphing and evolving categories.
Mike Kelley lives and works in Los Angeles. He has exhibited at Metro
Pictures since 1992. "Foul Perfection", a collection of Kelley's essays
and criticism, will be released by M.I.T. Press in November.
For additional information or images, please contact Jan Endlich or Allison
Card at Metro Pictures.
P) 212 206 7100 F) 212 337 0070 gallery@metropicturesgallery.com
Forthcoming Exhibition:
Eric Wesley, 14 December  1 February
METRO PICTURES
519 WEST 24TH ST NEW YORK 10011
T: 212 206 7100 F: 212 337 0070