Mike Kelley, one of the most influential artists of the 20th century, is the subject of an exhibition at the Paris Bourse du Commerce until February 19, 2024.

Copyright Mike Kelley – Bourse du commerce Pinault

A new look at this major and unclassifiable work

This retrospective dedicated to the American artist, among the most influential of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, offers a new look at this major and unclassifiable work, through his most important pieces, some of which belong to the Pinault Collection . It is organized by the Tate Modern (London), in collaboration with Pinault Collection, K21 — Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen (Düsseldorf) and the Moderna Museet (Stockholm). The exhibition is first presented at the Bourse de Commerce, in Paris, during the fall and winter of 2023 before continuing its journey.

Hand-made sculptures with a grating humor

From his years of study in Los Angeles, Mike Kelley (1954-2012) took up the genre of performance, drawing inspiration from militant feminist practices to put forward an innovative approach to creation, destabilizing the canons. He participated in several music groups throughout his life, including the proto-punk formation Destroy All Monsters from 1974, and regularly worked in collaboration with other artists. His most famous works are hand-made sculptures with a grating humor, then installations made from plush toys highlighting the gendered and commercial conditioning of the youngest. Traumatic memory and the dysfunctions of education are ideas developed throughout his career which culminate in the exhibition “Day Is Done” (2005), partially reconstituted at the Bourse de Commerce.

Cities of the future under glass bells

“Ghost and Spirit” presents a sequence of different bodies of work or immersive environments by the artist, among which are presented, in the Rotunda, the spectacular Kandors, cities of the future under glass bells. Also emerging throughout the tour are the “minor stories” – as he called them – of his own practice: drawings, photographs and preparatory writings enlightening the visitor on his thinking. Mike Kelley’s work has always been nourished by sub-cultural references and a tension between the depth of the critical thinking that he developed and the apparent superficiality of a pop aesthetic sometimes playing on seduction, or a trashy aesthetic. He also continued to highlight the role of the artist and the way in which he appears or disappears.

The difference between a ghost and a spirit

Visionary, Mike Kelley was a great explorer of notions that are still relevant today in the heat of contemporary debates: collective and individual memory, gender relations, social classes… The artist from Detroit (Michigan) is particularly interested in to how individual subjectivity is shaped by familial and institutional power structures within postmodern capitalist American society. In a note for a performance never performed in the early 1980s, Mike Kelley wondered about the difference between a ghost and a spirit : the first ends up disappearing when the second persists. He thought he was a ghost, and yet his spirit still lingers, particularly on younger generations of artists. It is this “persistent influence” (“A spirit has a lingering inluence”, he writes) of the spirit of Mike Kelley which runs through the exhibition. At the Bourse de Commerce, the “Ghost and Spirit” exhibition occupies the Salon, the Rotunda and all the galleries on the second floor, while the film Day Is Done (2006) is shown continuously in the Auditorium. The second floor follows a chronological progression by major themes or cycles of works by Mike Kelley. https://www.pinaultcollection.com/fr/boursedecommerce/mike-kelley