At least a couple of generations of art students have been shadowed by Kelly’s outpouring of foreboding and irony with his avid adoption of materials. This exhibition is like meeting a parent of people you know really well. There’s the likeness staring straight at you, even if the features have been shuffled about a bit when it comes to the kid. And this is an American family we're talking about. There’s a lot of stuff lost in translation. Kelley's work is so saturated in the neurotic soup he makes of American culture that it feels peculiarly local for such a globally influential artist. That any of this came as a revelation says something for the insipid contemporary diet served up by our public museums over the last thirty or so years. To think such a major force was surging through our art schools and there has never been an exhibition large or small of Kelley’s work in New Zealand for the rest of us.
Image: Mike Kelley at MoCA
