MIKE KELLEY 2 MAY– 5 AUGUST 2013

The Centre Pompidou is presenting Throughout the circuit, major the first retrospective in France installations, in which the artist devoted to Mike Kelley, with a makes use of every technique (such hundred-odd works produced as video, photography, painting and between 1974 and 2011, coming from disparate objects), are confronted with Europe and the United States. groups of more intimist works, The American artist, who died particularly on paper. prematurely in 2012, was born in the The erudite, somewhat irreverent suburbs of Detroit (Michigan) in 1954 work of Mike Kelley unfolds in a and moved to California during striking visual and sound circuit the Seventies. He left a prolific body of ranging from his first performances, unsettling, protean works drawing staged when he was a student at the on both “high” and “low” culture. famous Los Angeles art school The exhibition is structured around CalArts, to graphic work of key stages in the artist's output, astonishing richness, and spectacular including what is probably his best- multimedia set-ups. It all expresses known series of works, Half a Man, a caustic critical commentary on art staging stuffed toy animals and society. and rag dolls.

www.centrepompidou.fr Before entering the exhibition, visitors are met by the three chosen names (cave, chapel and profile) Horizontal Tracking Shot of a Cross Section of serve as a pretext for critical thinking about the Trauma Rooms, whose formal obviousness – relationship of possession. The works produced large, vertically-juxtaposed coloured panels – is for this performance based on the idea of the idol, deceptive. Behind the work we get intermittent with varying techniques and styles, reflect the glimpses of very short, obscure and unsettling composite nature of cultural references video footage found on the Internet, interrupting employed by Kelley. colour bars passing on three screens in succession. This to-ing -and fro-ing between a #3 highly codified formal proposal and trivial imagery This interest in popular musical culture can be is characteristic of the tensions present in found in the evocation of the punk rock group Mike Kelley’s work. Mike Kelley formed with in 1977, The Poetics. Its history, still known to few, is put #1 into perspective by the two artists in a The exhibition starts with the first performances magnificent installation, The Poetics Project. This Mike Kelley staged in the second half of the was shown at X in Kassel in 1997 Seventies while he was a student at CalArts, an before being acquired by the Musée national d’art art school well-known for its experimental daring. moderne. Visitors are encouraged to walk around Sound and humour are omnipresent in these this sound and visual environment, a huge collage pieces, part of which have been regrouped under where paintings mingle with sculptures and the term "Poetry in Motion". The artist makes use projections, representing not so much the of object-sculptures with elementary forms evocation of a group as an attempt to reactivate (tubes, cones, etc.), with a touch of the futuristic an unlisted landmark in the official history of this or minimalist, made of ordinary materials, and musical genre. The rehabilitation of "minor" which play the role of brokers of ideas, amplifiers histories is one of the core themes in Mike or decoders of language. The large installation in Kelley's work, which makes constant play with the exhibition, Performance related objects, fixed or linear accounts to recompose other 1977-79, is a selection of these objects, systems of reference that elucidate the course of soundtracks and photographs of performances, things in another way. displayed by the artist. These are echoed by the Birdhouses, accompanied by an ironic instruction #4 sheet: made using models found in DIY books, A large section of the exhibition is devoted to what they parody not only sculpture and architecture made Mike Kelley famous - not without a whiff of but also the emotional investment that goes into scandal – in the early Nineties: the series entitled items made by amateurs. Half a Man, which he began in 1987. Recuperated stuffed toy animals and hand-made cloth dolls #2 hang on the wall or are placed on small woven Plato’s Cave, Rothko’s Chapel, Lincoln’s Profile is mats or blankets: reminiscent of childhood, these a project for which Mike Kelley invented a text, objects can be interpreted on several levels. Their a series of paintings and objects –a group of wear-and-tear, craft-linked and derisory aspects which is presented here–, an installation and a gives them an emotional dimension directly performance presented in 1986 at the Artists opposing the rational criticism of conventions Space in New York. Kelley forms mental and found in minimalist sculpture or the ready-made. verbal associations, in a direct line from the Mike Kelley stigmatises the instrumentalisation writer Raymond Roussel, beween three figures in of emotions and their commodification. What he history in principle completely unrelated: Plato, shows is not in the least an autobiographical Rothko and Lincoln. They support a performance comment, but a set-up that is both tragic and for which he sets up scenery like a rock concert comic, arousing empathy and rejection alike in a stage, with the group Sonic Youth providing the tension that induces a certain malaise. musical aspect. The attributes associated with #5 #7 The Half a Man series also includes large In Mike Kelley's cosmogony, energies are at work, drawings of parts of the body (lungs, kidneys and spirits that take over beings or vital sexual so on), often associated, in a linear display giving energy. The circulation of waves and fluids is them a relationship of equivalence, with drawings a recurring motif in the artist's iconography, of dustbin bags or rag dolls. Other large paintings in the same way as stains, inkblots, shapeless on panel focus on intestines coupled with eyes mounds and aliens, for their ability to arouse all and brains, where the introduction of symmetry kinds of mental projections. The imposing serves as an ironic comment on deviant sexual sculpture SS Cuttlebone, with its undefined models. The radicality of the gesture, which contours ornamented with metal jewellery, consists in levelling out the representation of reflects this fascination for the formless. organs, and their function at the same time, is The Memory Ware series, to which it belongs, also part of the de-hierarchisation at work in Mike develops in two dimensions, with pictures made Kelley. Upturning the established order with of small found objects set in material to compose amazing audacity, it is meant to enable other a highly appealing visual world, despite their viewpoints and open out the field of interpretation. derisory character.

#6 #8 This section is based on the theme of education, The circuit ends with a room devoted to a group with Educational complex, a gigantic white model on the Kandors series, inspired by the mythical consisting of all the educational establishments home city of Superman. Mike Kelley provides that marked Mike Kelley's life. The smooth parts, numerous, versions of the different where the architecture is not detailed, correspond representations of the fictional city, ranging from to zones the memory is unable to restore: they large illuminated installations, seeking to render are symptomatic of the occurrence of a trauma, it in volume, to coloured microcosms evoking the according to the artist. The question of repressed miniaturised city owned by the hero. This series memory and the creation of "screen" memories once again relates to the question of recollection, innervates a whole area of Mike Kelley's whose blanks distort the faithfulness of any discourse, from this major work right through to representation. Kandor is never evoked in the the installations of the Day is Done corpus. same way in comic books, thus opening the way This latter series stages fictions created from to a multitude of versions in terms of form, images of the extracurricular activities of college all equally valid, which the artist exploits with pupils or university students, such as dressing-up irony and humour, playing with the appeal of parties or other unconventional competitive coloured environments, or exuding a criticism rituals. Artistic education is also stigmatised of modernist architecture. through proposals condemning the ascendancy of models that curb creativity. EXHIBITION CATALOGUE INFORMATIONS

Curator Mike Kelley 01 44 78 12 33 Sophie Duplaix Edited by Sophie Duplaix www.centrepompidou.fr Chief Curator of Contemporary Somogy éditions d’art, Paris; Collections at the Musée national Éditions du Centre Pompidou, EXHIBITION OPEN TO THE PUBLIC d’art moderne Paris from 2 May to 5 August 2013 144 p., 130 colour ill. Galerie Sud, Level 1 Research Coordinator Price: €29.90 Every day except Tuesdays Annalisa Rimmaudo from 11 am to 9 pm with the collaboration of Sophie Ticket counters close at 8 pm Bensaid AROUND THE ADMISSION Production Manager EXHIBITION Access with the ticket Bruno Veret “Museum & Expositions” assisted by Aure de Thieulloy VIDÉO ET APRÈS Valid throughout the day at the Special "Mike Kelley" event Museum, for all exhibitions Architect and Stage Designer Presented by Benjamin Thorel, and the View of Paris, for a single Camille Excoffon art critic and independent curator admission in each space Afternoon with Mike Kelley €13, concessions €10 Graphic Design Monday 13 May 2.30-6.30 pm, Free with the annual pass and for Bastien Morin Cinema 1 under-18sw Free admission, subject to available seating Online ticket purchase and printing Mike Kelley & Friends (full price only) This travelling exhibition is Monday 13 May 7.00 pm, Cinema 1 www.centrepompidou.fr/billetterie organised by the Stedelijk Museum Price: €6, reduced rate: €4; free Amsterdam and its director admission for Museum Pass holders TWITTER Ann Goldstein in collaboration with More information on the exhibition the Mike Kelley Foundation for FILM can be found via Twitter (hashtag the Arts. The curator for the first Ericka Beckman #Kelley) or via http://www.twitter. exhibition concept was The Super-8 Trilogy com/centrepompidou Dr. Eva Meyer-Hermann. Wednesday 22 May, 8.00 pm, Cinema 2 Some works of art presented in The “Mike Kelley” retrospective Showing with Ericka Beckman this exhibition may hurt the publics on show at the Centre Pompidou present feelings, particulary those of young is curated by Sophie Duplaix, Price: €6, reduced rate: €4; children Chief Curator of Contemporary free admission for Museum Pass © Centre Pompidou, Direction Collections at the Musée national holders des publics, Service de l’information d’art moderne. des publics et de la médiation Mike Kelley 2013 The “Mike Kelley” exhibition was Film and Sculpture Graphic design made possible by lead support Session introduced by Jean-Philippe c-album of the Turing Foundation, with Antoine (Paris VIII University, major support from Cees and Inge Vincennes/St Denis) Printed by Friedling Graphique, Rixheim, 2013 de Bruin-Heijn, the Andy Warhol Wednesday 5 June, 7.00 pm, Foundation for the Visual Arts and Cinema 2 All Art Initiatives. Price: €6, reduced rate: €4; free admission for Museum Pass holders