Kelley, Mike
Entry updated 18 October 2024. Tagged: Artist, Music.
(1954-2012). US artist and musician, a prominent member of the Los Angeles underground scene, who later achieved gallery success. His best known band, Destroy All Monsters, took its name from the English language title of the Japanese Gojira/Godzilla film Kaiju Soshingeki (1968), though there is nothing explicitly sf-related in their music. Several of his later artworks do engage with sf themes. Notable examples include "Silver Ball" (1994), a sculptural assemblage of a Spaceship and the remains of a picnic, presumably left behind by abductees; "Sublevel" (1998), a small-scale recreation of the basement of the CalArts building in California, including a room where Alien abductions allegedly took place; and "Kandor" (1999-2011), made up of numerous videos, sculptures and installations, which recreate Superman's Miniaturized home world City in a bell jar, as a metaphor for alienation and the impossibility of returning to one's past. Kelley's relentless attempts to be "subversive" are often irritatingly juvenile, but do sometimes achieve a haunting resonance in their use of popular cultural tropes to explore memory and its burdens. [CWa]
Mike Kelley
born Wayne, Michigan: 27 October 1954
died South Pasadena, California: circa 31 January 2012 [exact date not known; he was found on 2 February]
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