Exhibition open by appointment only.
Mike Kelley: 1954 – 2012 filled the entire south wing of The Watermill Center. Curator Harald Falckenberg has selected soundtracks from “The Poetics,” Kelley’s art punk band in collaboration with Tony Oursler (1977–1983), and videos by Kelley (1978–1986). The various pieces, in different media, from the “Kandors” project (2000/2007–2011), include models and banners from the initial “Kandor-Con 2000” installation, seven large-scale projections (2007), one of the sculptures with video projection of “Kandors” (2007) and Kelley’s last performance video, “Vice Anglais” (2011).
The “Kandors” series, which Kelley initiated in 1999, are sculptural depictions of Superman’s birthplace Kandor. The popular Superman story recounts the adventures of an alien being sent to Earth as a baby to escape the total destruction of his home planet Krypton. However, it turns out that Kandor was not, in fact, destroyed. Shrunk and bottled by a villain, the futuristic city was later rescued by Superman and protected under a bell jar in his santurary. The installation “Kandor-Con 2000” was first presented in the millennium show at Kunstmuseum Bonn and later at the Technical University Berlin (2007), the Deichtorhallen Hamburg/Sammlung Falckenberg (2007), ZKM Karlsruhe (2008), the Shanghai Biennial (2008) and the Pompidou Center, Paris (2010). “Kandor-Con 2000” is conceived – and continued to develop – as a work in progress. Throughout the exhibitions, architecture students built cardboard models of Kandor inspired by the original comics. These models were sent to Los Angeles where Kelley made scaled down casts. The cardboard models that will be shown at The Watermill Center were produced during the show at the Pompidou Center, Paris.
curated by Harald Falckenberg
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