mike kelley: reversals, recyclings, completions and late editions
Paul McCarthy: Clean Thoughts
Retrieving 'lost' memories and artworks was a central theme to 'Clean Thoughts' and 'Reversals, Recyclings, Completions and Late Editions', two exhibitions held in New York during late 2002. Although surveys, both exhibitions indulged in some selective revision on behalf of artists Paul McCarthy and Mike Kelley, and the results were surprising. These shows drew out the distinct differences of the two mid-career Californians from many other so-called 'shock/schlock' contemporary artists. While McCarthy and Kelley have collaborated since the late 1980s, central to their pursuit of new independent work was the repetition and, to an extent, failure of some pieces produced during the 1990s. The difficulty in approaching the content of the exhibitions came with their 'survey' or revisionist nature: minimal information was given to the viewer, but then the viewer was not us, but rather McCarthy and Kelley revising their own histories. As McCarthy states 'usually it's about me, I'm the viewer'.1
McCarthy's 'Clean Thoughts' at Luhring Augustine Gallery, included works the artist had stored for several years, and only recently completed. Drawing upon his appropriation of Jeff Koons' 1988 ceramic piece, Michael Jackson and Bubbles, McCarthy cluttered the first room with versions of his own tribute to Koons. The impetus for McCarthy's new works was the re-surfacing of a 1999 sculpture that overtly exaggerated the head, hands and feet of a Koons-inspired Jackson and chimp companion. In the recent exhibition, a C-print mounted on Plexiglas, Michael Jackson Red, was evidence of McCarthy's original work and was surrounded by larger-than-life bronze, steel and fibreglass versions, each more absurd than the next. Propped upon cases reminiscent of caskets or storage crates, slightly different works from the 'Michael Jackson' series, Fucked