When the US artist Mike Kelley died in 2012, The New York Occasions labelled him an “artist with angle” resulting from his sardonic send-ups of aesthetic tendencies like Minimalism and wildly meandering narratives drawn from common and underground tradition, literature and philosophy. “Artwork is about fucking issues up for the pure pleasure of fucking issues up,” Kelley stated in a 2004 interview (the movie, 105 Minutes with Mike, is archived on YouTube).
Ghost and Spirit, an exhibition at Tate Trendy, revisits the experimental, anarchic and influential work of the artist, whose observe from the late Nineteen Seventies to his demise straddles drawing, collage, efficiency and video.
The present’s co-curator Fiontán Moran argues that Kelley’s work “completely resonates right now”, his legacy underpinning the work of artists and the broader world. “His work asks important and prescient questions concerning the position of artwork and the id of the artist, the expertise of residing in a hyper-mediated society, and obsessions with numerous types of perception techniques,” Moran says. “He was very a lot conscious of his place as a white working-class man in postmodern, capitalist America, and his work actively leans into the sophisticated actuality of this world.”
Jim McHugh’s portrait of Kelley as The Banana Man (round 1983), with Final Instrument in Use (1977) within the background © Jim McHugh
Tate Trendy’s exhibition options a few of Kelley’s most essential works, from drawings and collages to movies, performances and multimedia installations. “Some highlights embrace his pivotal and unnerving work The Poltergeist (1979), a seven-part photographic work depicting Kelley apparently within the midst of ‘communing’ with spirits, that was created to imitate spiritualist images from the early twentieth century,” Moran says.
The exhibition additionally consists of Kelley’s key early installations, such because the Monkey Island mission (1982-83), his first solo video work The Banana Man (1982) and Extra Love Hours Than Can Ever Be Repaid and The Wages of Sin (1987), which marks the primary time Kelley used stuffed-toy animals as a medium.
This assemblage of grotesque dolls and toys proven alongside an altar of melted candles prompts questions on teen angst and the potential futility of toiling over crocheted handicrafts (the piece can be thought to attract on Summary Expressionist artwork, mockingly echoing Jackson Pollock’s drip work).
“A slideshow of pictures will signify the main work Instructional Advanced (1995), a big sculptural mannequin of each place that Kelley had been educated, and we are going to characteristic the linked work Sublevel (1998), a large-scale mannequin of the basement of CalArts [California Institute of the Arts] lined with pink crystal resin,” Moran says.
Reminiscence and repressed want
The exhibition culminates with Kelley’s later installations that continued his exploration of the position of reminiscence and repressed want, together with the epic multi-part mission Extracurricular Exercise Projective Reconstruction (2000-11) and works from the Kandors sequence (1999–2011), that are sculptural depictions of Superman’s fictional birthplace, Kandor. This sequence consists of dramatic, glowing depictions of mannequin cities usually positioned below bell jars.
The exhibition might be proven at 4 venues in whole. It has already been seen at Bourse de Commerce in Paris and K21, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen in Düsseldorf. After Tate Trendy it travels to Moderna Museet in Stockholm (12 April-14 September 2025). “The exhibition was devised by Tate Trendy and every touring venue has adopted the identical curation idea for the present, knowledgeable by main themes that Kelley explored all through his observe,” Moran says.
The Tate presentation is the primary venue to incorporate Kelley’s Sublevel set up, the mixed-media piece Extracurricular Exercise Projective Reconstruction (Singles’ Mixer) (2004) and the video Bridge Customer (Legend-Journey) (2004), primarily based on an adolescent’s story about exploring a haunted web site at evening.
Kelley’s artwork is understood for being searingly humorous; certainly the author Charlie Fox says within the newest version of Tate And so on. journal: “I don’t suppose anyone in artwork historical past has been funnier than Mike Kelley. His artwork may be very American, simply as a lot as it may be sinister or deeply unhappy.”
Does Moran agree? “He’s definitely one of many artists who has successfully used humour, usually a darkish sarcastic humour, to convey his love of ambiguity, double meanings, and position play. Simply as jokes type a dialogue, his works play with the viewer’s expectation in ways in which reimagine and subvert how we see the world round us. He discovered nice pleasure in his model of unfavourable pleasure.”
• Mike Kelley: Ghost and Spirit, Tate Trendy, till 9 March 2025
