The artist Mike Kelley has died at the age of 57.
Early reports suggest he committed suicide. Though best known as an
influential artist whose work was exhibited at numerous galleries
and museums worldwide, Kelley was also an enthusiastic sound maker
and label owner.
During the 1970s in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Kelley founded the
influential Noise outfit Destroy All Monsters with Jim Shaw, Niagra
and Carey Loren. Later, after moving to Los Angeles (which would
remain his home base), and gaining a reputation with his
performance art and installations, Kelley started his own label,
Compound Annex. On it, he released recordings by DAM
and fellow cohorts, as well as his collaborations with artists like
Scanner, Jean Baudrillard and Tony Oursler. One of Kelley's
artworks, Ahh… Youth, was used as the cover of Sonic
Youth's 1992 album, Dirty. Kelley also regularly performed
live in LA with members of The Los Angeles Free Music Society.
Kelley’s art made use of performance, painting, sculpture, sound
and stuffed toys, taking ideas from an array of sources, including
Americana, the 'Orgone energy' theories of Wilhelm Reich, repressed
memory syndrome and alien abduction, to name a few. Kelley was also
a prolific writer, with two collections of his essays, Foul
Perfection and Minor Histories, both published by MIT
Press.
In later years, his art grew from the scrappy and
eclectic sculptures of the late 70s, heavily influenced by the DIY
aesthetics of his Michigan years, to more grandiose, multi-part
productions, with large scale budgets, such as 2005's Day Is
Done which comprised of a feature length, 32 part film
recreating the contents of an American High School Yearbook.
