Mike Kelley: Sublime
Mike Kelley once said: “I want to keep away from any focus on the human person except for its sheer materiality. ...” during a conversation with Thomas McEvilley that took place in 1992. What Kelley meant at the time was that he wanted to avoid the questions of identity. The artist instead chose to work with the unconscious and memories of trauma and uncanny hidden places deep within the psyche. When on the subject of sublime and taking from Edmund Burk, McEvilley gave this interpretation that echoed the ideas behind the artist’s works in the current exhibition at Hauser & Wirth: “For Burke the sublime was anything that is so vast and ‘other’ that it seems by its very existence to threaten the annihilation of the observing subject. One is witnessing a thing whose inner meaning is one’s own annihilation.” *
On September 10, Hauser & Wirth opened “Mike Kelley,” the gallery’s first exhibition devoted to the artist’s later works produced during 2007 – 2011 just a year before his death. Organized in collaboration with Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts, this is the first in New York to focus exclusively on the artist’s later series, Kandors.
The atmosphere upon entering the gallery spaces feels like a cavernous refuge of outer space creatures. Under a spectrum of dim lights exuberating rays of primary colors and in between filled up of various secondary colors as the result of light refractions, Kelley’s Kandors are mesmerizing to the eyes as they look to be floating in space.
This exhibition is large and comprehensive, as mentioned before it is the first in the US to showcase Kelley’s entire series of Kandors. From here we are going to skip ahead a little. After one maneuvers by the city sculptures, and passes through a narrower and hallway-like gallery space of the artist’s Lenticular series (which are of images depicting Kandor City encased in a glass bottle with a tube feeding its citizens Kryptonic atmosphere), there stands the most monumental piece of the exhibition- Kandor 10B (Exploded Fortress of Solitude).
Kelley’s fascination with solitude and trauma is manifested on epic scale of this enormously giant cave piece. Through every sculpted, cracked and stacked pieces that make up this pile of ruins, it triggers a fearsome sensation that somewhere in the dark a monster resides. Once again, the gallery is dimly lit therefore leaves one with a feeling of precariousness and unease. But be careful of where you tread, and only parts of the cave has spot lights from above, while the rest is left pitch dark for those brave enough to explore its mysterious architecture.
Then the rewarding surprise comes when one discovers a rainbow-colored recess. This treasure is Superman’s solitary sanctum glittering with tiny gold trinkets. As the title suggests, the fortress has exploded and the viewers are left with a fairytale like ending. Amid the seemingly never-ending darkness there is a heart of gold to surface, for the one who is stoic enough to endure destruction, trauma, loneliness and alienation. This is the duality of Kelley’s Kandor, it is a captured and lifeless city encased and cut off from rest of the world, but it is also a precious refuge retaining a sliver of hope and fantasy.
"Mike Kelley" opens until October 24th at Hauser & Wirth on 18th Street in New York.
"Mike Kelley" opens until October 24th at Hauser & Wirth on 18th Street in New York.
*Simone Morley, ed., "Mike Kelley In Conversation with Thomas McEvilley, 1992," Documents of Contemporary Art: The Sublime (London and Cambridge: Whitechapel gallery and The MIT Press, 2010.), 201-204.
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