A feature-length 'musical' composed of 32 separate video chapters.Each section is a live-action recreation of a photograph of an 'extracurricular activity' found in a high school yearbook. Over the years Kelley has collected hundreds of such images and arranged them into rough categories. 'Day is Done' is now a large-scale video installation consisting of sets and projection screens.
Day is Done
Gagosian Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of new work by Mike
Kelley. "Day is Done" is Kelley's first New York exhibition since 2002.
"Day is Done" is a feature-length "musical" composed of thirty-two
separate video chapters. Each section is a live-action recreation of a
photograph of an "extracurricular activity" found in a high school
yearbook.
Over the years Mike Kelley has collected hundreds of such images
and arranged them into rough categories. Most of the imagery is
immediately recognizable as standard forms of folk entertainment: plays,
follies, theme dress-up days, holiday festivities, religious spectacles,
hazing rituals, etc. Such activities serve as carnivalesque disruptions of
the normal school schedule, mirroring the function of such events in the
broader cultural arena. Many of them, such as Halloween and
Christmas-related activities, are secular outgrowths of pagan ritual.
Unlike "Extracurricular Activity Projective Reconstruction #1 (A Domestic
Scene)," which is a thirty minute drama based on a single photograph of a
stage play, "Day is Done" is multipart with iconography derived from the
image files Kelley has labelled: vampires, candle lighting, undead
musicals, Goth dance acts, mimes, religious entertainments, horned
figures, equine events, thugs, and hicks. The artist chose to work with
such a diverse set of images in order to force himself to create a longer,
more complex, video work somewhat akin to traditional filmic narratives
employing montage. Though not a traditional narrative, "Day is Done"
employs recurring characters, intimations of simultaneous action, and some
semblance of narrative flow.
"Day is Done" will exist in several different forms. The one being shown
at Gagosian Gallery is a large-scale video installation consisting of sets
and projection screens. Various scenes will be programmed to turn off and
on prompting the viewer to follow the action throughout the presentational
space. Several scenes will run simultaneously in order to promote the
effect of filmic cross-cutting in actual space.
Mike Kelley was born in Detroit, MI in 1954 and currently lives and works
in Los Angeles. He is a graduate of the California Institute of the Arts
and the University of Michigan. His solo exhibitions include: The Tate
Liverpool (2004), Museu D'art Contemporani, Barcelona (1997), Whitney
Museum of American Art, New York and Los Angeles County Museum of Art
(1993), and the Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, D.C. (1991).
A fully illustrated catalogue will accompany this exhibition. For more
information, please contact the gallery.
Opening: Thursday, November 10th, 5 - 8pm
Gagosian Gallery
555 WEST 24th Street - New York