Memory Ware / Wood Grain / Carpet

Kelley's most recent works

“Memory Ware,” “Wood Grain,” “Carpet” : these three mediums/techniques, already experimented with by Kelley in the past, are brought together in this luxurious publication. Kelley consciously presents a nexus of works whose similar surface treatments and presentation inevitably evoke modernist painting history.

“All three techniques,” explains Emi Fontana, “reveal a concern with theories of composition and color associated with the history of modernist painting. Kelley works with retrieval and ruse, operating on multiple levels. He explores and excavates, starting from his own productions … Popularly known as the master of exercises in garbage style, Kelley is in reality Mr. Clean. He situates his output within a wider system, that of recent modernist art history, appropriating modernism’s structures, acting from within, but without exercising the appropriational coldness common to the gestures of many American artists of his generation. In this way he proclaims himself as the last representative of the avant-garde—a true aesthetic revolutionary.”

Mike Kelley (*1954) is a Los Angeles-based artist and writer. He is the curator of the acclaimed exhibition “The Uncanny” (1993/2004). His writings were published by MIT Press in two volumes. Drawing distinctively on high art and vernacular traditions that include historical research, popular culture, and psychology, Kelley came to prominence in the 1980s with a series of sculptures composed of craft materials. His recent work offers new dialogues engaged with the distinctive techniques brought together here.

Published by the Galleria Emi Fontana, Milan.