Hauser & Wirth Publishers presents Mike Kelley: Timeless Painting, an extensive catalog published November 2019 to accompany an exhibition of the same name at Hauser & Wirth New York, organized by guest curator Jenelle Porter.
Produced in collaboration with the Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts, this new volume includes images of the complete series of works from which the exhibition draws, as well as texts by visual artists responding to Kelley’s work and an introduction by Jenelle Porter. Artist contributors include: Edgar Arceneaux with Kurt Forman, Carroll Dunham, Daniel Guzmán, Richard Hawkins, Jay Heikes, Jamian Juliano-Villani, Mary Reid Kelley, Laurie Simmons, and Christina Quarles.
Over the course of his four-decade career, Mike Kelley generated a remarkably diverse oeuvre in an array of media, conflating so-called high culture and low culture, critiquing prevailing aesthetic conventions, and combining traditional notions of the sacred and the profane. The exhibition, organized in collaboration with the Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts, features paintings from different series created over a 15-year period, between 1994 and 2009, spotlighting the breadth of the artist’s engagement with the medium of painting.
The Timeless Painting exhibition and publication contribute new perspectives to the discourse around the artist’s work, challenging conventional readings by exploring Kelley’s own meticulously documented intentions as a point of departure; resituating these works within the larger formal context of his oeuvre; and expanding traditional definitions of painting.
Mike Kelley: Timeless Painting takes both its title and conceptual starting point from the series that gave rise to many of the works on view, and for which “the compositional approach,” Kelley stated, “is to be read as outside of the influence of historical aesthetic development.” Featuring examples from 12 bodies of work, including The Thirteen Seasons, Cult Paintings, and Missing Time Color Exercises, this project highlights Kelley’s remarkable exploration of painting in color.
About the Artist
Mike Kelley is widely considered one of the most influential artists of our time. In much of his work, Kelley drew upon the spectrum of high and low culture and was known to scour flea markets for America’s cast-offs and leftovers. Mining the banal objects of everyday life, Kelley elevated these materials to question and dismantle Western conceptions of contemporary art and culture. His projects invoke a range of media and forms, illustrating the artist’s versatility and underscoring a number of Kelley’s recurrent themes, such as repressed memory, sexuality, adolescence, class, and Americana, which were central to his artistic praxis. Throughout his career, Kelley also worked on curatorial projects, collaborated with many artists and musicians, and produced a formidable body of critical and creative writing.
About Hauser & Wirth Publishers
Since its founding in 1992, Hauser & Wirth Publishers has grown into a dynamic imprint that produces more than 20 titles per year, with a special focus on artists’ archives and writings. It creates unique, object-like books that encourage an understanding and appreciation of modern and contemporary art, with a backlist also comprising monographs, artists’ books, publications focused on important private collections, and exhibition catalogue—often bringing new and overlooked aspects of an artist’s creative practice into focus. By commissioning original, in-depth scholarship to give thoughtful insight, Hauser & Wirth Publishers aims to craft accessible, lasting records of artists’ work, ideas, and exhibitions.
In 2019, Hauser & Wirth Publishers opened a stand-alone global headquarters and flagship bookshop in the historic center of Zurich, Switzerland, which operates alongside a parallel enterprise in New York. The Zurich headquarters occupies the former home of the Oprecht & Helbling bookshop and the legendary Europa Verlag publishing house. Today it serves as an international hub for research and scholarship, led by Chief Editor Dr. Michaela Unterdörfer, who has helmed Hauser & Wirth Publishers since 2005.
