Mike Kelley (artist)

Mike Kelley ( born October 27, 1954 in Wayne, Michigan, † probably January 31, 2012 in Los Angeles, California ) was an American installation and performance artist. Kelley employed in his works and texts with belief systems and mental dependencies of the people trapped inside.

Life and work

Kelley was born in a strict Roman Catholic family and had four siblings. His father was a school janitor and his mother worked as a cook in the canteen of the local Ford plant. In 1976, he earned a degree as a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and in 1978 Master of Fine Arts at the California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, California. Among his teachers was the performer Laurie Anderson and the conceptual artist John Baldessari. In 1977 he founded with Tony Oursler the punk band The Poetics, which existed until 1983.

A wider audience Kelley was known since 1986 with installations in which he ordered at flea markets collected, colorful plush toys, crochet blankets and dolls to kitschy, but at the same time also irritating groups. In 1992 one of his works, a rag doll, used as the cover image for the Sonic Youth album Dirty. The first edition of the CD also contained a photograph Kelley on which the performance artist Bob Flanagan and Sherry Rose naked are seen in indecent poses with life-sized rag dolls.

Kelley took in 1992 at the Documenta 9 and 1997 at the Documenta 10 in Kassel in part. In 1995, the Munich Haus der Kunst showed ( as a takeover of the Whitney Museum of American Art ), a retrospective Catholic Tastes / Catholic preferences. 2007 showed Kelley on the Skulptur.Projekte in Münster a petting zoo / petting zoo, a round equipped with video screens gazebo, could be touched in the sheep, goats and ponies. "With objects and installations, but also performances he draws attention to subliminal collective fears and desires that he mainly localized in the American, faith-based middle class."

Kelley lived and worked in Los Angeles. On 31 January 2012, he was found dead at his home in South Pasadena. The police suspected that he had taken his own life.

Awards

  • 2006: Wolfgang Hahn Prize
  • 2003: Guggenheim Fellowship
  • 1990: National Endowment for the Arts Museum Program Exhibition Grant
  • 1984: Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Grant

Public collections

Wayne (Michigan) Discogs Integrated Authority File
571882
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