The following text is included in the press release accompanying the exhibition "MIKE KELLEY. KANDORS" [Jablonka Galerie Berlin, September 29 - December 22, 2007]. Copyright: Mike Kelley, Courtesy Jablonka Galerie Köln/Berlin
According to the Superman mythos is the fictional city of Kandor, the capitol of Superman's home planet Krypton the only remaining vestige of the exploded Krypton, and the city is preserved, in a reduced state, in a bottle in Superman's possession. Interestingly, the image of Kandor was never codified and the numerous representations of it in the comic book throughout the years vary widely in appearance. In this exhibition Kelley reconstructs ten unique versions of Kandor, with its enclosing bottle, which, despite obvious differences, purport to depict the same city. Thus, Kandor – as an eternally maintained, but constantly reconfigured, relic of Superman's childhood – is an apt symbol of Kelley's interests in the vagaries of memory, and relates to his own works that refer to Repressed Memory Syndrome, such as Educational Complex (1995), an architectural model made up of replicas of every educational institution that the artist ever attended, with the sections he cannot remember left blank. Such issues were foregrounded in an earlier work by Kelley that also focused on the theme of Kandor: Kandor-Con 2000, which was presented at the exhibition "Zeitwenden" at the Kunstmuseum Bonn in 2000.
MIKE KELLEY
born 1954 in Detroit, Michigan lives and works in Los Angeles
Biography
1976 BFA University of Michigan
1978 MFA, California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, CA
1998 The University of Michigan School of Art and Design Distinguished Almnus Award
2000 The California Institue of Arts Distinguished Almnus Award
2003 John Simson Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship
2006 Wolfgang Hahn Preis
Selected Exhibitions
2007 Kandors, Jablonka Galerie, Berlin Skulptur Projekte Münster 07, Münster Collateral: When Art Looks Like Cinema. Hangar Bicocca, Milano, Italien Make Your Own Life: Artist’s in and Out of Cologne. Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia; Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle; Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami
2006 Profondeurs Vertes, Musée du Louvre, Paris
2005 Goetz Meets Falckenberg. Sammlung Falckenberg Kulturstiftung Phoenix Art, Hamburg Day Is Done, Gagosian Gallery, New York
2004 Mike Kelley, Galerie Ghislaine Hussenot, Paris Mike Kelley: The Uncanny. Tate Liverpool, Liverpool, England. Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Luwig Wien, Wien
2002 Mike Kelley: Reversals, Recyclings, Completions, and Late Additions. Metro Pictures, New York Mike Kelley: Selected Works 1982-1990. Skarstedt Fine Art, New York
