Mike Kelley

Tate Modern, London, Bourse de Commerce – Pinault Collection, Paris, K21 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf, and Moderna Museet, Stockholm, have joined forces to present a major retrospective of the work of Mike Kelley, a key figure on the Californian scene during the decades 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s.

This artist who defies categorization is among the most influential of the late twentieth century. His work formulates a critique of American society and its aberrations, oscillating between trashiness and a pop aesthetic, juggling between high culture, popular culture, and counter-culture. Appropriating and combining every technique: performance, music, drawing, painting, sculpture, installation, photography, and video, Mike Kelley invented and blazed his own artistic trail, one which has inspired several generations of artists. Disturbing rather than provocative, he takes on symbols, icons, and elements of individual and collective memory which he filters through his own practice, with a perspective that is at times unhinged, touching, irreverent, and melancholic.

The exhibition presents some of his most famous works, such as the Kandor cities (sculptures inspired by the Superman comic strip), which make up a spectacular installation, but also more intimate and fragile works which critique social, cultural, and family conditioning. Mike Kelley asked himself: after death, do we become a mere ghost whose memory fades, or an inspiring, commanding spirit whose influence remains alive? The visitors of this new retrospective will find their own answers to this question.