ladoublure:

Rest In Peace, Mike Kelly.

wewantnothing:

Mike Kelley: Bad Boy | Art21 “Exclusive” (by art21org)

Episode #117: Mike Kelley sets the record straight about being called a “bad boy” throughout his career, describing the shifting tastes of critics and artists towards abject art in recent years.

Mike Kelley’s work ranges from highly symbolic and ritualistic performance pieces, to arrangements of stuffed-animal sculptures, to wall-sized drawings, to multi-room installations that restage institutional environments (schools, offices, zoos), to extended collaborations with artists such as Paul McCarthy, Tony Oursler, and the band Sonic Youth. His work questions the legitimacy of ‘normative’ values and systems of authority, and attacks the sanctity of cultural attitudes toward family, religion, sexuality, art history, and education. He also comments on and undermines the legitimacy of the concept of victim or trauma culture, which posits that almost all behavior results from some form of repressed abuse. Kelley’s aesthetic mines the rich and often overlooked history of vernacular art in America, and his practice borrows heavily from the confrontational, politically conscious “by all means necessary” attitude of punk music.

Learn more about Mike Kelley: http://www.art21.org/artists/mike-kelley

VIDEO | Producer: Wesley Miller & Nick Ravich. Interview: Susan Sollins. Camera: Norbert Arnsteiner & Nancy Schreiber. Sound: Stacy Hruby & Ullrich Vlasak. Editor: Paulo Padilha. Artwork Courtesy: Mike Kelley. Special Thanks: MUMOK, Vienna.

fette:

Bas Jan Ader, I’m too sad to tell you, 1971, one-channel video.

—

If I have been able, without scandalizing anybody, to enter cesspools, to handle putrid substances, to spend part of my time in refuse dumps, and to live, as it were, in places that the majority of men would close off as degraded and disgusting, why should I blush to open a cesspool of another kind (a cesspool filthier, I assure you, than all the rest), in the reasonable hope of doing some good by examining it in all its aspects?

Mike Kelley. 1954-2012.

Absolutely devastated, and selfishly mourning years of art unmade.

Legendary Artist Mike Kelley Dead at 58, an Apparent Suicide

thepacegallery:

Chuck Close’s Advice to Young Artists