Rehearsing Hell
Art critic Michael Kimmelman
in today’s New York Times:
The Los Angeles veteran Mike Kelley’s latest show is a sprawling, scabrous spectacle of noisome installations and hilarious videos, occupying the whole of the cavernous Gagosian Gallery in Chelsea. Ingratiating Mr. Kelley’s work never has been, nor is it now. But serious it is, in its brainy, abrasive, black-humored way, and this is by far his most ambitious and perversely entertaining effort, an attempted Gesamtkunst-werk of satanic rituals and advertising jingles mingled with allusions to Godard, German Expressionist cinema and Stockhausen….
A teenage girl dressed like a hillbilly recounts a nonsense parable in the manner of H. P. Lovecraft crossed with William Faulkner as part of a faux-reality show….
Did I mention the church confirmation in which a plump female communicant morphs into a devil worshiper, and teenage boys dressed in Nazi outfits suddenly rap about sex with fat women?….
… Mr. Kelley’s deep roots are in the performance tradition going back to the Vienna Actionists.
A teenage girl dressed like a hillbilly recounts a nonsense parable in the manner of H. P. Lovecraft crossed with William Faulkner as part of a faux-reality show….
Did I mention the church confirmation in which a plump female communicant morphs into a devil worshiper, and teenage boys dressed in Nazi outfits suddenly rap about sex with fat women?….
… Mr. Kelley’s deep roots are in the performance tradition going back to the Vienna Actionists.
For descriptions of the Vienna Actionists, do a Google search.
From yesterday:
Angels
Even devils too
Wait to show
How far we come
To joy
Even devils too
Wait to show
How far we come
To joy
It seems that Mike Kelley and Michael Kimmelman are among Chris Whitley’s “devils.” Let us hope that they enjoy the company of General Augusto Pinochet (see previous entry) in the afterlife.
Related material: Art Wars and The Crimson Passion.
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