ART CITIES:N.York-Mike Kelley

Since the late ‘70s, Mike Kelley has produced a body of work that takes as its target notions of taste, morality, authority, and social responsibility and addresses the American social and psychological condition. The artist grew up in a working-class community in the suburbs of Detroit, where he became involved with the counterculture scenes of rock and free jazz, from Iggy and the Stooges to cosmic jazz musician Sun Ra, that became ideal critical tools for subverting ideological orders.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Hauser & Wirth Gallery Archive

With 24 works most on loan from Museums and significant international private Collections, the exhibition “Memory Ware” at Hauser & Wirth Gallery in New York is devoted exclusively to the series of the same name by Mike Kelley. Comprised of some 100 “Memory Wares” and associated works made the period 2000-10, the series occupies a prominent place in Kelley’s materially and conceptually complex output. It includes two- and three-dimensional pieces: wall works known as “Memory Ware Flats” and freestanding sculptures. The title is a reference to the Canadian folk art practice in which the surfaces of common household vessels – bottles, vases, lamps – are covered with such small personal items and keepsakes as keys, buttons, shells, and beads in a matrix of clay. Kelley’s “Memory Ware” grew from other projects such as “Educational Complex” (1995), “Frame and Frame” (1999), and most specifically “Categorical Imperative” (1999), in which a large installation was created from twenty years worth of unused art material. In the “Memory Ware” series he was particularly interested in the re-examination and re-use of materials. Here, art practice trumps the sentimentality of the actual tchotchkes employed to make the work. Kelley once stated, “I playfully give new ‘life’ to unused studio material and discarded formal and thematic considerations in a manner similar to memory ware’s revitalization of cast-off objects”.At first glance, the “Memory Ware” project would appear to be an anomaly in Kelley’s oeuvre. In place of the caustic wit and satirical orientation that characterized much of his output, the Memory Ware Flats in particular appear to emphasize decorative surface effects and to maintain a content-neutral demeanor. But the borrowed aesthetic Kelley deployed in the series is best understood as part of a labyrinth in which intricate paths of ideas and allusions intersect and circle back upon one another. In making the series of sculptures and paintings, Kelley elaborated on artistic strategies he had developed throughout his career: contrasting and playing with conventions to reveal their role in generating and framing different meanings, and cross-wiring readymade categories to confound our expectations.

Info: Hauser & Wirth Gallery, 32 East 69th Street, New York, Duration 3/11-23/12/16, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, www.hauserwirth.com