This exhibition took place at our previous Hong Kong, 80 Queen's location.
Widely considered one of the most ambitious and influential artists of our time, Mike Kelley often drew from a wide spectrum of high and low culture, mining the banal objects of everyday life to question and dismantle Western conceptions of contemporary art and culture. Beginning 27 October 2022, Hauser & Wirth Hong Kong is proud to present the late Los Angeles-based artist's first solo exhibition in the Greater China: 'Mike Kelley: S__ubharmonic Tangerine Abyss.' Organised in collaboration with the Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts, the exhibition focuses on one of Kelley's most significant later series, Kandors. Initiated by Kelley in 1999, the Kandors series comprises of Superman's birthplace, the city of Kandor. Kandor served as Kelley's inspiration for a twelve-year long project and meditation on themes of cultural memory, passing time, and visions of utopia. In addition to the visually opulent and technically ambitious sculptures and lenticulars that Kelley's Kandors series is known for, this exhibition will feature three distinct kinds of videos that Kelley included in his original Kandors show at Jablonka Gallery in 2007.
Over the course of a career spanning four decades, Mike Kelley (b.1954-2012) developed a substantial body of work which encompassed drawing, painting, sculpture, video, performance, music and critical writing. Born in Detroit, the artist studied at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor from 1973, before relocating to Los Angeles in 1976 to enrol in an MFA programme at the California Institute of the Arts. A response to the prevailing modernist aesthetic he encountered during the course of his instruction at the University of Michigan, Kelley often appropriated imagery from low-end vernacular and counterculture, taking inspiration from local comic books and artists, erotica, pulp fiction and advertising.
Press release courtesy Hauser & Wirth.
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