Untitled (4)
A student of John Baldessari, Mike Kelley devoted much of his artistic practice in the early to middle 1990s to the investigation of repression in contemporary culture. Whether it was through installations comprised of stained stuffed toys laid out on a blanket in the middle of a gallery floor or drawings incorporating scatological imagery, his work evoked everything from pathos to revulsion in an attempt to celebrate that which the dominant culture abandons, forgets, abuses and devalues. Here Kelley turns a dust mote into a monumental artistic subject, creating a picture that not only recalls Man Ray's photograph of dust "breeding" on the surface of Duchamp's Large Glass, but also invokes photography's uncanny ability to transform negligible bits of reality into fascinating pictorial compositions simply by presenting them "close-up".
Artwork Details
- Title: Untitled (4)
- Artist: Mike Kelley (American, Wayne, Michigan 1954–2012 South Pasadena, California)
- Date: 1994
- Medium: Gelatin silver print
- Dimensions: 81.3 x 59.7 cm (32 x 23 1/2 in.)
- Classification: Photographs
- Credit Line: Purchase, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Gift, through Joyce and Robert Menschel, 1995
- Object Number: 1995.192.1
- Rights and Reproduction: © 2025 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
- Curatorial Department: Photographs
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