Mike Kelley – Troubled childhood, punk music, and beautiful art
Mike Kelley was born on 27 October 1954 in Wayne, Michigan. His relationship with his parents was difficult – he felt controlled by his mother and rejected by his father. Mistrust and protest against authority thus accompanied him from early on and stamped his artistic creativity. He graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor in 1976 and two years later, in 1978, with a Master of Fine Arts from the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia where his teachers included the performance artist Laurie Anderson and conceptual artist John Baldessari. As well as the fine arts, it was music in particular that fascinated Kelley and in 1977, he co-founded the punk band The Poetics with his artist colleague Tony Oursler, which endured until 1983. His breakthrough came, however, with room installations made up of crocheted blankets, stuffed toy animals and dolls. The components for his art objects he found at flea markets, and the inspiration for them in the dark abysses of his soul.
The longing for Superman’s flight into solitude
Mike Kelley irritated and fascinated his growing audience with his stuffed toys, although that was completely unintended. In fact, he sought isolation and solitude in his existence as an artist. And so, from 1999, he designed his Kandor objects, brightly coloured city models in neon colours based on the fictional metropole of Kandor, the capital of Krypton, home of the comic hero Superman. Those familiar with the subject know that Superman himself owned such a model – in his Fortress of Solitude. Mike Kelley also thought of erecting such a fortress with his art, but contrary to his wishes, instead gained ever more popularity through his work. The city models differ from Kelley’s usual grotesque imagery: they seem almost clinically pure, free from any contamination, and mirror the artist’s longing for an existence free of all dirt - perhaps a legacy of his strict Catholic upbringing.
The fear of memories of the past
His whole life, Mike Kelley was unable to shake off his childhood experiences. For his art project Mobile Homestead, he even wanted to have his entire childhood home reconstructed to use as a museum and meeting place. The project was never realised, but the plans alone show how much the two-time documenta participant had suffered under the burdening legacy of his past. In 2007, the artist wished to confront collective fears with a petting zoo at the Skulptur Projekte in Münster, where ponies, sheep and goats were confined in a pavilion equipped with video screens. Regardless of all his personal mental hardships, Mike Kelley received prizes and awards for his art, including the Guggenheim Fellowship in 2003 and the Wolfgang-Hahn Prize in 2006.
Mike Kelley was found dead in his house in Los Angeles on 31 January 2012. The authorities believe he took his own life. He who engages with the devil does not change the devil, but himself, the artist once said.
Mike Kelley - Works that have already been sold at Kunsthaus Lempertz:
