Mike Kelley Empathy Displacement: Humanoid Morphology (2nd & 3rd Remove) #4 1990 Acrylic on panel and found hand-made doll in painted wooden and glass box. Panel: 42 x 19 in. (106.7 x 48.3 cm); box: 7 3/4 x 5 x 15 3/4 in. (19.7 x 12.7 x 40 cm).
Provenance Rosamund Felsen Gallery, Los Angeles Catalogue Essay While the Detroit-born, L.A.-based artist Mike Kelley’s resumé includes everything from punk-rock politico, to curator, to conceptual sculptor, he is especially notable for his ingenious use in the 1980s of appropriation of craftor folk objects as a Postmodern response to the hyper-masculine snobbery and dematerializing tendencies of 1970s Conceptual and Minimalist schools. His Empathy Displacement: Humanoid Morphology (2nd & 3rd Remove) #4, from 1990, is of a series that marked the end of his decade-long explorationof the psycho-social implications of craft objects and their potential insertioninto the arena of contemporary art. The present Empathy Displacement workconsists of a black, coffin-like box installed on the floor, in which lies a found Raggedy Ann doll, situated so as to confront the viewer through a smallwindow. Above the sarcophagal sculpture is a black and white acrylicrendering of the doll, reminiscent of a headstone. Aside from perhaps symbolizing the end of an artistic obsession, the somewhat sinister juxtaposition of childhood objects with the decidedly macabre graveyard imagery is characteristic of Kelley, whose work is typically informed by the emotional subtexts of post-Freudian psychoanalytic theory: “Focused onthe absence of craft’s formal location, and stranded outside a ‘normative’ exchange system, Kelley opens up the signifying terrain of the craft object onto a psychological economy predicated on ‘mysterious worth,’ intractable ‘guilt,’ and ‘emotional usury’.... Mobilizing the unsung, labor-intensive, personal yet anonymous investments of craft, long vilified or disparaged bythe masculine high-art tradition, Kelley moves through a key terrain in what can be termed ‘post-appropriation,” (J.C.Welchman, “The Mike Kelleys,” Mike Kelley London, 1999). Read More
Mike Kelley Empathy Displacement: Humanoid Morphology (2nd & 3rd Remove) #4 1990 Acrylic on panel and found hand-made doll in painted wooden and glass box. Panel: 42 x 19 in. (106.7 x 48.3 cm); box: 7 3/4 x 5 x 15 3/4 in. (19.7 x 12.7 x 40 cm).
Provenance Rosamund Felsen Gallery, Los Angeles Catalogue Essay While the Detroit-born, L.A.-based artist Mike Kelley’s resumé includes everything from punk-rock politico, to curator, to conceptual sculptor, he is especially notable for his ingenious use in the 1980s of appropriation of craftor folk objects as a Postmodern response to the hyper-masculine snobbery and dematerializing tendencies of 1970s Conceptual and Minimalist schools. His Empathy Displacement: Humanoid Morphology (2nd & 3rd Remove) #4, from 1990, is of a series that marked the end of his decade-long explorationof the psycho-social implications of craft objects and their potential insertioninto the arena of contemporary art. The present Empathy Displacement workconsists of a black, coffin-like box installed on the floor, in which lies a found Raggedy Ann doll, situated so as to confront the viewer through a smallwindow. Above the sarcophagal sculpture is a black and white acrylicrendering of the doll, reminiscent of a headstone. Aside from perhaps symbolizing the end of an artistic obsession, the somewhat sinister juxtaposition of childhood objects with the decidedly macabre graveyard imagery is characteristic of Kelley, whose work is typically informed by the emotional subtexts of post-Freudian psychoanalytic theory: “Focused onthe absence of craft’s formal location, and stranded outside a ‘normative’ exchange system, Kelley opens up the signifying terrain of the craft object onto a psychological economy predicated on ‘mysterious worth,’ intractable ‘guilt,’ and ‘emotional usury’.... Mobilizing the unsung, labor-intensive, personal yet anonymous investments of craft, long vilified or disparaged bythe masculine high-art tradition, Kelley moves through a key terrain in what can be termed ‘post-appropriation,” (J.C.Welchman, “The Mike Kelleys,” Mike Kelley London, 1999). Read More
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.jpg "Source: Christie's")
.jpg "Source: Christie's")
.jpg "Source: Christie's")
