Mike Kelley at MoMA PS1

The full-museum retrospective on the late Mike Kelley at MoMA PS1 opened a few weeks ago.  I attended the opening in my self-made Kelley-inspired pom pom jacket, but it's taken me a few weeks to develop my feelings about the show and begin to understand the overwhelming experience.


First of all, it is not an exhibition that can be confronted in one visit.  There is just too much -- so many extremely different, opposing mediums and ideas -- that it requires more than one sojourn in order to begin to even scratch the surface of the meaning and intent of Kelley's oeuvre.


Kelley created work that spanned a 30-year career in almost every medium imaginable: assemblage, film, works on paper, painting, sculpture, digital, installation, and on and on.  Much of this work deals with themes of isolation, repressed memory, sexuality, self-exploration.  My personal favorite work is Deodorized Central Mass with Satellites (1991), which I planned ahead to emulate with my pom pom jacket.

However, one of the most poignant pieces in the exhibition is Lumpenprole and Ageistprop (above).  A vast knit blanket stretched across the floor, concealing unidentified lumps beneath it, this work is the perfect example of Kelley's interest in repressed memory, and the way he consistently returned to previously explored themes throughout his widespread career.  While I was viewing the work, another museum attendee held his iPhone poised at the ready in order to catch the movement of the mysterious shapes (spoiler alert: they don't move).  This anecdote is a perfect example of my experience of the show: the feeling that there is something lurking around the corner that could change or develop at any moment, without notice.

Jacket: DIY

Dress: H&M

Shoes: United Nude

Clutch: Betsey Johnson

Photos by Kathy Paciello; Lumpenprole image from hamptonartshub.com.

INSPIRATION: Steven Vasquez Lopez.

If you know me, then you know of my obsession with Staedtler Triplus Fineliners--the perfect marker/pen hybrids that come in a rainbow of colors in an award-winning easel case.  When I came across these mind-blowing works on paper by San Francisco-based Steven Vasquez Lopez, I assumed they were created with thread.  Wrong!  These works are ink on paper, using the dear-to-my-heart Fineliners!  How beautiful are these drawings, and how miraculously does the artist capture the warp and weft of fabric?

Images from cover-magazine.com, design-milk.com, and cescontemporary.com.

HADIEH SHAFIE

Hadieh Shafie, Magenta (Ketab Series), 2012

I'm fascinated by the hand-dyed, rolled paper works of Hadieh Shafie (1969-), an Iranian artist who studied at Pratt.  Reminiscent of ancient scrolls, and inspired by Abstract Expressionism, the works resound on multiple levels.  When a friend sent me the above image of myself, which was enhanced using the iPhone app Percolator, I was delighted by it's affinity to the mesmerizing sculptures.

[Shafie image from artsy.net; image of me by Brett McKenzie.]

Les Robes Géographiques

I've fallen in love with the paper series Les Robes Géographiques by London-based artist Elisabeth Lecourt.  Though these pieces are not meant to be worn, I feel the need for something similar in my closet and on my wall. 

"The vulnerability of the human being, the fragility of the bodies exposed by Lecourt proposes a painful beauty as well, as much by the emotional thing of the topic like by its own necessity to understand our body and what there is within us."

via

More maps here.

KARA WALKER

"I wanted to make work where the viewer wouldn't walk away; he would either giggle nervously, get pulled into history, fiction, into something totally demeaning and possibly very beautiful." --Kara Walker

Kara Walker (1969-) is a New York based artist, well known for her paper-cut silhouette works, which broach issues of race, identity, politics, and violence.

Walker's work first came to the public's attention when she was in her mid-20s, and she became the youngest artist to receive a MacArthur "genius" grant at age 27.

Specifically in relation to the plight of African American women in the antebellum South, Walker's room-size tableaux depict scenes from history, literature, and lore, adding a cinematic quality to the arrangement of life-size figures.

Walker works in many mediums, including gouache, animation and even shadow puppets.  In my opinion, her paper cut works are the most boldly thematic, zeroing in on the issues she raises through the stark contrast of black and white.

Upon immediate confrontation, the beautiful craftsmanship of the cut paper is striking.  The social, political, sexual, and violent themes come to light upon closer inspection.

Walker currently lives in New York City, where she is Professor of Visual Art at Columbia University's MFA program.

I'm wearing a Jill Stuart dress, Candela shoes, and a vintage leather clutch.

Photos by @kay_elle_pea.  Walker images from columbusmuseum.com, degenerationartstream.blogspot.com, nyclovesnyc.blogspot.com, and museumstudiesblog.blogspot.com.

NICK MAUSS

I'm returning refreshed after a spring break from blogging. After a few weeks spent working on some other projects, traveling, and looking at art, I'm full of ideas and inspiration.

I came across this dress while vintage shopping in Atlanta, and it ended up being the perfect piece to reflect the work of Nick Mauss.

Mauss (b. 1980) is a New York-based artist whose work I first admired at the Compass in Hand exhibition at the MoMA last year.

Each work encompasses multiple elements, including watercolor, acrylic, pastel, and carbon prints, resulting in multilayered collages.

Discussing these works in Art in America, Steve Pulimood wrote, "Colors explode and dissolve free of the restraint of form, flourishing with Kandinsky-like exuberance."

Incorporating images of well-known 19th-century dandies atop marbleized paper and paint, this body of work represents youthful vitality and frivolity.

I've long admired Mauss' subjects--such Victorian dandies as Oscar Wilde and Charles Baudelaire--and their respective influences on art and fashion.

Mauss' current work encompasses an even broader set of media, including video installation, and is represented by 303 Gallery in New York.

I found the marbled print of the dress to be wonderfully reminiscent of the swirling elements of Mauss' works on paper.

I'm wearing a vintage dress from the Clothing Warehouse in Atlanta, Michael Kors wood and lucite platforms, leather Lauren Merkin clutch, and a metal stud cuff from the Met Store.

[Mauss images from moma.org.]