This Sunday (Oct. 13), MoMA PS1 in Long Island City, New York, opens the first New York retrospective in two decades for the late artist, CalArts alumnus and former faculty member Mike Kelley (Art MFA 78). The exhibition, which collects more than 250 works from Kelley’s multifaceted art practice—his body of work includes drawings on paper, sculpture, performances, music, video, photography and painting—is the largest installation that MoMA PS1 has ever organized, and only the second to utilize the entire museum.
Kelley rose to international prominence, in part, through art that investigates one’s formative years, particularly in classrooms and schoolyards, which makes the installation in MoMA PS1, a former elementary school, all the more fitting. Exhibit curator and MoMA PS1 associate director Peter Eleey shares in The Wall Street Journal that he is adding several new Kelley works that were not in the exhibit’s previous iterations, and that he’s capitalizing on the works being situated in a school setting.
More from the article:
In a sunken space near the entry, visitors will see From My Institution to Yours, Mr. Kelley’s 1987 series of oversize posters that echo the har-har jokes that often get taped to office refrigerators or factory locker rooms. One example shows a stooped-shouldered mouse accompanied by a caption: “Shall I Rush Your Rush Job Before I Start the Rush Job I Was Rushing When You Rushed In?”
Mr. Eleey said the artist, who was teaching art at [the] California Institute of the Arts at the time he created the installation, always wished he could string a red ribbon from these posters to the private workroom of whatever museum or school displayed them. In a nod to these wishes, Mr. Eleey suspended a 50-foot-long ribbon along the museum’s basement ceiling leading from the posters to an area close to PS1’s own workroom.
The retrospective is open at MoMA PS1 until Feb. 2, 2014, and will make its last stop at Museum of Contemporary Art* in Los Angeles in March next year.
* The original post had Los Angeles County Museum of Art as the last stop for the retrospective. The post has been edited to reflect new information.