Mike Kelley Dead - Mike Kelley, the daring and influential contemporary installation artist who counted the band Sonic Youth and artist Paul McCarthy among his collaborators, has died, police said on Wednesday. He was 57.
Kelley's body was found at his home on Tuesday night and it appeared he had committed suicide, South Pasadena Police Sgt. Robert Bartl said, without providing further information on the death. An autopsy was pending.
The artist's death brings a tragic end to a career empowered by both a punk-rock rebelliousness and pop-culture kitsch. Kelley famously filled art spaces with sculptures and unorthodox objects, and his solo exhibit "Catholic Tastes" at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York," which provocatively combined dolls, drawings and other objects, established him as a major figure in the art world in 1993.
"His work was widely collected and exhibited internationally," said Stephanie Barron, senior curator of modern art at Los Angeles County Museum of Art. "He had a voracious appetite for all kinds of art. He was enormously curious and worked incredibly at his craft. He was never afraid to think really big. Artists like that don't come around very often."
continue reading => Artist Mike Kelley found dead in Los Angeles home
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 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.
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.
Kelley was found dead in an apparent suicide in 2012.
Mike Kelley Profile
Born : October 27, 1954 Wayne, Michigan, U.S.[2]
Died : c. February 1, 2012 (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
Mike Kelley Video
Kelley's body was found at his home on Tuesday night and it appeared he had committed suicide, South Pasadena Police Sgt. Robert Bartl said, without providing further information on the death. An autopsy was pending.
The artist's death brings a tragic end to a career empowered by both a punk-rock rebelliousness and pop-culture kitsch. Kelley famously filled art spaces with sculptures and unorthodox objects, and his solo exhibit "Catholic Tastes" at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York," which provocatively combined dolls, drawings and other objects, established him as a major figure in the art world in 1993.
"His work was widely collected and exhibited internationally," said Stephanie Barron, senior curator of modern art at Los Angeles County Museum of Art. "He had a voracious appetite for all kinds of art. He was enormously curious and worked incredibly at his craft. He was never afraid to think really big. Artists like that don't come around very often."
continue reading => Artist Mike Kelley found dead in Los Angeles home
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 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.
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.
Kelley was found dead in an apparent suicide in 2012.
Mike Kelley Profile
Born : October 27, 1954 Wayne, Michigan, U.S.[2]
Died : c. February 1, 2012 (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
Mike Kelley Video
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