The work of artist Mike Kelley (b. 1954) embraces performance, installation, drawing, painting, video, and sculpture. Drawing distinctively on high art and vernacular traditions, including historical research, popular culture, and psychology, Kelley came to prominence in the 1980s with a series of sculptures composed of craft materials. His recent work offers dialogues with architecture and with repressed memory syndrome, and a sustained inquiry into his own aesthetic and social history. The subjects on which Kelley has written are as varied as his artistic media. They include the work of fellow artists, sound, caricature, the uncanny, UFOlogy, and gender-bending.
This book offers a diverse collection of Kelley's writings from the last twenty-five years. It contains major critical texts on art, film, and the wider culture, including his piece on the aesthetic he calls "urban Gothic." It also contains essays, mostly commissioned for exhibition catalogs and journals, on the artists and groups David Askevold, Öyvind Fahlström, Douglas Huebler, John Miller, Survival Research Laboratories, and Paul Thek, among others. Kelley's voices are passionate, analytic, and ironic, and his critical intelligence is leavened with touches of whimsy.

Foul Perfection: Essays and Criticism

Arts & Photography

KELLEY, MIKE

History & Criticism

Mit Pr

What John C. Welchman calls the "blazing network of focused conflations" from which Mike Kelley's styles are generated is on display in all its diversity in this second volume of the artist's writings. The first volume, Foul Perfection, contained thematic essays and writings about other artists; this collection concentrates on Kelley's own work, ranging from texts in "voices" that grew out of scripts for performance pieces to expository critical and autobiographical writings.Minor Histories organizes Kelley's writings into five sections. "Statements" consists of twenty pieces produced between 1984 and 2002 (most of which were written to accompany exhibitions), including "Ajax," which draws on Homer, Colgate- Palmolive, and Longinus to present its eponymous hero; "Some Aesthetic High Points," an exercise in autobiography that counters the standard artist bio included in catalogs and press releases; and a sequence of "creative writings" that use mass cultural tropes in concert with high art mannerisms--approximating in prose the visual styles that characterize Kelley's artwork. "Video Statements and Proposals" are introductions to videos made by Kelley and other artists, including Paul McCarthy and Bob Flanagan and Sheree Rose. "Image-Texts" offers writings that accompany or are part of artworks and installations. This section includes "A Stopgap Measure," Kelley's zestful millennial essay in social satire, and "Meet John Doe," a collage of appropriated texts. "Architecture" features an discussion of Kelley's Educational Complex (1995) and an interview in which he reflects on the role of architecture in his work. Finally, "Ufology" considers the aesthetics and sexuality of space as manifested by UFO sightings and abduction scenarios.

Minor Histories: Statements, Conversations, Proposals (Writing Art)

Critical writings and commentary by the Los Angeles based artist Mike Kelley.
The work of artist Mike Kelley (b. 1954) embraces performance, installation, drawing, painting, video, and sculpture. Drawing distinctively on high art and vernacular traditions, including historical research, popular culture, and psychology, Kelley came to prominence in the 1980s with a series of sculptures composed of craft materials. His recent work offers dialogues with architecture and with repressed memory syndrome, and a sustained inquiry into his own aesthetic and social history. The subjects on which Kelley has written are as varied as his artistic media. They include the work of fellow artists, sound, caricature, the uncanny, UFOlogy, and gender-bending.
This book offers a diverse collection of Kelley's writings from the last twenty-five years. It contains major critical texts on art, film, and the wider culture, including his piece on the aesthetic he calls "urban Gothic." It also contains essays, mostly commissioned for exhibition catalogs and journals, on the artists and groups David Askevold, Öyvind Fahlström, Douglas Huebler, John Miller, Survival Research Laboratories, and Paul Thek, among others. Kelley's voices are passionate, analytic, and ironic, and his critical intelligence is leavened with touches of whimsy.

The MIT Press

The second volume of writings by Los Angeles artist Mike Kelley, focusing on his own work.
What John C. Welchman calls the "blazing network of focused conflations" from which Mike Kelley's styles are generated is on display in all its diversity in this second volume of the artist's writings. The first volume, Foul Perfection, contained thematic essays and writings about other artists; this collection concentrates on Kelley's own work, ranging from texts in "voices" that grew out of scripts for performance pieces to expository critical and autobiographical writings.Minor Histories organizes Kelley's writings into five sections. "Statements" consists of twenty pieces produced between 1984 and 2002 (most of which were written to accompany exhibitions), including "Ajax," which draws on Homer, Colgate- Palmolive, and Longinus to present its eponymous hero; "Some Aesthetic High Points," an exercise in autobiography that counters the standard artist bio included in catalogs and press releases; and a sequence of "creative writings" that use mass cultural tropes in concert with high art mannerisms―approximating in prose the visual styles that characterize Kelley's artwork. "Video Statements and Proposals" are introductions to videos made by Kelley and other artists, including Paul McCarthy and Bob Flanagan and Sheree Rose. "Image-Texts" offers writings that accompany or are part of artworks and installations. This section includes "A Stopgap Measure," Kelley's zestful millennial essay in social satire, and "Meet John Doe," a collage of appropriated texts. "Architecture" features an discussion of Kelley's Educational Complex (1995) and an interview in which he reflects on the role of architecture in his work. Finally, "Ufology" considers the aesthetics and sexuality of space as manifested by UFO sightings and abduction scenarios.

MIT Press]

Mike Kelley’s burlesque masterpiece, Day Is Done, is a work in progress conceived in three hundred and sixty-five separate chapters. Chapters 2 to 32 were staged as a complex and spectacular mixed-media installationwhich Kelley scripted, scored, shot and sculptedat Gagosian Gallery, New York, in 2005. To mark the first stage of this ambitious project, Kelley has edited an elaborate visual catalogue of Chapters 2-32. This richly illustrated book includes video stills and installation views, Kelley's libretto and selected writings and notes on key aspects of the project, and a critical review by John Welchman. Each video chapter imaginatively reconstructs scenes from photographs of extracurricular activity” that Kelley found in high school yearbooks. Over many years he has collected hundreds of such images and grouped them into categories referring to common forms of folk entertainment: plays, thematic costume days, holiday festivities, religious spectacles, hazing rituals, and so on. Though not a standard narrative, Day Is Done features recurring characters and some semblance of narrative flow in a provocative look at the formative effects of school on the adolescent psyche.

Mike Kelley: "Day Is Done"

Welchman, John

Individual Artists

GAGOSIAN GALLERY

A fascinating history of the explosive convergence of avant-garde art and rock music The dynamic relationship between rock music and visual art crosses continents, generations, and cultures. Beginning with Andy Warhol’s involvement with The Velvet Underground in 1967, artists have maintained a strong connection to rock. Artists such as Slater Bradley, Mike Kelley, and Raymond Pettibon have created album covers and music videos for rock bands, while rock musicians such as Bryan Ferry, John Lennon, and Peter Townsend have emerged from art schools, and punk and new wave bands such as Talking Heads and Sonic Youth have shared the same social and artistic milieu as artists including Robert Longo and Richard Prince.
Sympathy for the Devil: Art and Rock and Roll Since 1967 looks at the intimate and inspired relationship between the visual arts and rock-and-roll culture, charting their intersection through works of art, album covers, music videos, and other materials. Organized regionally by cultural centers including London, New York, Los Angeles, and Cologne, the essays examine rock and roll’s style, celebrity, and identity politics in art; the experience, energy, and sense of devotion rock music inspires; and the dual role that many individuals play in both the sonic and visual realms. Presenting work that defies a more literal interpretation of the theme and instead suggests the style, energy, and attitude that has come to be associated with rock and roll, this fascinating volume is essential for admirers of contemporary art and culture.

Sympathy for the Devil: Art and Rock and Roll Since 1967

Graham, Dan

Diederichsen, Diedrich

Nickas, Bob

Higgs, Matthew

Hell, Richard

Molon, Dominic

Tumlir, Jan

Koether, Jutta

Elms, Anthony

History

Yale University Press

Mike Kelley. Contemporary multimedia artist. This book has a few bumps on the cover corners and two visible creases on front cover - but is otherwise very good. Clean pages; whole covers, spine perfect.

Mike Kelley: Catholic Tastes

Whitney Abrams

Essays by Deborah Rothschild, Tony Oursler, Mike Kelley, Constance DeJong, Ian Berry, and Laura Heon. Interview by Elizabeth Janus. Foreword by Linda Shearer. Introjection marks the first mid-career survey of the internationally recognized video artist Tony Oursler. Plumbing popular and punk culture for the twisted icons that structure our collective unconscious, Oursler creates fragmentary images and scenes that might belong to the hallucinations of a delinquent adolescent on a bad trip. The viewer is left to imagine what ungodly narrative was frozen in time to create such surreal, but somehow uncomfortably familiar, mayhem. Though darkly humorous, his work, known to most for his use of sculptural rag dolls onto which he projects the video image of a human face, delves deeply into the question of how the twinned forces of sex and violence, gender and power function in our culture. This catalogue traces the evolution of Oursler's career from early single channel videos through his current mixed-media installations and experiments in digital media. Combining sculpture, video, performance, and text, Oursler's work addresses complex contemporary issues with empathy, insight, and wit. Also included are four critical essays, two interviews, an essay by the artist as well as a comprehensive exhibition history and bibliography. "Oursler's spectral characters exhibit the unidimensional persona of the crazed or possessed. Narcissistically fixated by the glare that animates them, they take on hallucinatory appearances reminiscent of phantoms, poltergeists, grotesques and ghouls, the archetypal protagonists not only of nightmares but of the modern genres of horror and their timeless predecessors, folk tales: all sanctioned collective repositories for the repressed and suppressed." Lynne Cooke, Parkett

Introjection: Tony Oursler Mid-Career Survey

DeJong, Constance

Berry, Ian

Rothschild, Deborah

Oursler, Tony

Rothschild, Deborah Menaker

Williams College Museum of Art

Tetsumi Kudo: Garden of Metamorphosis accompanies the first solo museum presentation of this highly original but under-studied artist's work in the United States. Organized by the Walker Art Center in close collaboration with Hiroko Kudo, the artist's widow, it features approximately 70 works covering the full trajectory of his amazingly productive career, which spanned from the late 1950s through the 80s. Born in Japan, Kudo first gained notoriety in the Tokyo art scene of the late 50s. He immigrated to Paris in 1962, working in a range of media--objects, sculpture, installation, drawing and painting--and presenting numerous Happenings and performances. Kudo's work and activities intersect with many important postwar artistic trends--including French Nouveau Réalisme, Fluxus, Pop art, 60s anti-art tendencies and 80s Postmodernism. Throughout his life and career, Kudo remained particularly Japanese while his art and vision were consistently and uniquely transcultural, internationalist and cosmopolitan. This beautifully designed exhibition catalogue includes an essay examining Kudo's philosophy, the evolution of his artistic vocabulary and his place in art history by curator Doryun Chong; a reflection by artist Mike Kelley; a selection of Kudo's writings, interviews with the artist and other historical criticism; and an illustrated chronology by Hiroko Kudo.

Tetsumi Kudo: Garden of Metamorphosis

Kudo, Hiroko

Walker Art Center

My name's Kelley, and-- that's my opinion

Jokos Pub

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