Mike Kelley: Ghost and Spirit
Tate Modern, London
From October 3rd, 2024 until March 9th, 2025
Mike Kelley’s experimental practice spans from drawings to videos, performances, and multimedia installations, creating a form of dark pop art. Drawing from media, pop culture, underground culture, philosophy, literature, and history, Kelley’s works challenge the belief systems and institutional structures that shape our social roles. The exhibition at Tate Modern in London, encompassing his entire career, centers around a never-realized performance script by Kelley titled Under a Sheet/Existence Problems, preserved in the artist’s archive. The script explores the idea of a ghost disappearing while the spirit remains, reflecting Kelley’s lifelong exploration of absence, ritual, and identity, heavily influenced by his Catholic upbringing.
opening image: Mike Kelley, Ahh...Youth!, 1991. Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts.
The exhibition opens with Kelley’s early performances created during his studies at the California Institute of the Arts from 1976-78 and features one of his most significant and unsettling works, The Poltergeist (1979). Created for a collaborative exhibition with artist David Askevold, this seven-part photographic piece depicts Kelley emitting an ethereal substance from his nostrils, mimicking the appearance of early 20th-century spirit photography. The exhibition includes works from Kelley’s early dynamic installations, such as the Monkey Island project (1981-85) and the extensive Half a Man project (1987-91), which introduces his work with craft objects. Kelley saw craft as an act of resistance against the dominance of modernist painting and sculpture, which he viewed as inherently masculine. Worn and often dirty second-hand toys are crafted into colorful and playful compositions like More Love Hours Than Can Ever Be Repaid and The Wages of Sin (1987), and the photographs Ahh… Youth! (1991), known for the cover of Sonic Youth’s Dirty album. In the mid-1990s, Kelley continually played with the audience’s reaction to his work, exploring conspiracy theories, the power of imagination, and the role of memory. The exhibition culminates with Kelley’s later installations that brought to light childhood memories and repressed desires. One of the highlights is the large Kandors series, created from 1999 to 2011. These illuminated models of Superman’s mythical lost home, each preserved under a glass dome, form a ghostly urban landscape that hints at the psychological depths of the iconic American superhero.
For further information tate.org.uk.
