Mike Kelley
(1954-2012)
Mike Kelley was born in Detroit, Michigan in 1954. He graduated from the University of Michigan in 1976. Kelley’s work is extremely diverse in topic and medium. It includes performances, installations, drawings, and sculptures - made of multiple materials and non-art objects, including stuffed animals. Kelley comes from a generation that consistently blurred the traditional boundaries between ‘high’ and ‘low’ art and questioned the societal and cultural values to which art is usually bound. As a result, his works challenge traditional attitudes towards topics such as religion, sexuality, gender, education and even art history. Kelley’s work has also been influenced by vernacular American art and music. It is this constant challenge and variety of influences that makes Kelley’s works so intriguing and powerful. At times subtle or uncanny, and at times extremely blunt, their message comes across to the viewer in a myriad of forms.
Mike Kelley has exhibited extensively throughout the United States and Europe. Recent solo exhibitions of his work have been held in institutions such as the Watari Museum of American Art in Tokyo in 2018, the Museum of Cycladic Art in Athens in 2017, the WIELS Centre d'Art Contemporain in Brussels in 2008, the Musée du Louvre in Paris in 2006 and the Tate Liverpool and Museum Moderne Kunst Stiftung Ludwig in Vienna in 2004. A major retrospective exhibition was held at the reopening of the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, in 2013 and traveled to the MOCA, Los Angeles in 2014. He has also participated in exhibitions in major institutions such as the MUMOK (Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig) in Vienna, the Pinakothek der Modern in Munich, and the Stedelijk Museum CS in Amsterdam. Kelley has participated in multiple Whitney Biennials, and others held internationally. Mike Kelley was a prolific writer and critic himself, and his work has been featured in multiple publications. Mike Kelley lived and worked in Los Angeles.
