After a successful debut at MoMA’s PS1 last fall, the largest retrospective of artist Mike Kelley’s work is now on display at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. The comprehensive show spans Kelley’s 35-year career and touches on every aspect of Kelley’s work, including drawing, painting, video, performance, photography, and sculpture. To celebrate the homecoming of his work, Opening Ceremony has teamed up with the Mike Kelley Foundation to present a limited series of T-shirts and tote bags emblazoned with distinctive imagery from his vast portfolio, sold exclusively at OC and at the LA MOCA shop to benefit the museum.
Born in Detroit, Mike Kelley moved to Los Angeles in the mid-1970s and spent the next three decades skewering social norms and upending expectations of pop art with eye-popping pieces that explore mass media culture, sexuality, religion, and conservative American values with a winking post-punk eye.
With the help of the Mike Kelley Foundation, Opening Ceremony culled through the artist’s extensive archive to select six distinctive images for this limited collection. A black-and-white photograph was pulled from his 1979 piece The Poltergeist, a performance staged in Los Angeles with David Askevold which was Kelley’s first acclaimed performance work, debuting only a year after he completed an MFA program at CalArts. More playful images were selected from Kelley’s 1983 piece Monkey Island, including two symmetrical monkeys hinged at the buttocks, and a pen and ink drawing of The Singing Root, from Monkey Island: Travelogue. A trip Kelley took to the primate displays at the Los Angeles Zoo inspired him to explore the formal similarities between humans and animals.
This Sunday, MOCA celebrated the exhibition’s opening with an all-day event at their Geffen Contemporary location, where the show is displayed. Throughout the day MOCA members were treated to performances, including a rendition of Mike Kelley’s 1989 piece Pansy Metal/Clovered Hoof, choreographed by Anita Pace, and a special performance by Kelley’s close friend and collaborator Kim Gordon, also of the band Sonic Youth, and artist Jutta Koether. One of Kelley’s most famous pieces is Ahh…Youth!, which includes the photograph of the knit stuffed animal that graced the cover of Sonic Youth’s 1992 album Dirty.
Between performances, we asked some of MOCA’s distinguished guests about Mike Kelley’s lasting impact and his work’s homecoming to his adoptive city of Los Angeles. See their answers to the left!
Shop the Opening Ceremony and Mike Kelley Foundation collection HERE | See the Mike Kelley retrospective at MoCA through July 28, 2014
The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA
152 North Central Avenue
Los Angeles, CA
MAP
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BOYCHILD and Wu Tsang&
Born in Detroit, Mike Kelley moved to Los Angeles in the mid-1970s and spent the next three decades skewering social norms and upending expectations of pop art with eye-popping pieces that explore mass media culture, sexuality, religion, and conservative American values with a winking post-punk eye.
With the help of the Mike Kelley Foundation, Opening Ceremony culled through the artist’s extensive archive to select six distinctive images for this limited collection. A black-and-white photograph was pulled from his 1979 piece The Poltergeist, a performance staged in Los Angeles with David Askevold which was Kelley’s first acclaimed performance work, debuting only a year after he completed an MFA program at CalArts. More playful images were selected from Kelley’s 1983 piece Monkey Island, including two symmetrical monkeys hinged at the buttocks, and a pen and ink drawing of The Singing Root, from Monkey Island: Travelogue. A trip Kelley took to the primate displays at the Los Angeles Zoo inspired him to explore the formal similarities between humans and animals.
This Sunday, MOCA celebrated the exhibition’s opening with an all-day event at their Geffen Contemporary location, where the show is displayed. Throughout the day MOCA members were treated to performances, including a rendition of Mike Kelley’s 1989 piece Pansy Metal/Clovered Hoof, choreographed by Anita Pace, and a special performance by Kelley’s close friend and collaborator Kim Gordon, also of the band Sonic Youth, and artist Jutta Koether. One of Kelley’s most famous pieces is Ahh…Youth!, which includes the photograph of the knit stuffed animal that graced the cover of Sonic Youth’s 1992 album Dirty.
Between performances, we asked some of MOCA’s distinguished guests about Mike Kelley’s lasting impact and his work’s homecoming to his adoptive city of Los Angeles. See their answers to the left!
Shop the Opening Ceremony and Mike Kelley Foundation collection HERE | See the Mike Kelley retrospective at MoCA through July 28, 2014
The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA
152 North Central Avenue
Los Angeles, CA
MAP
BOYCHILD and Wu Tsang&