“Mike Kelley as the Banana Man,” 1981 (Image courtesy of MoMA PS1)
Color Wheel is a series in which we identify a trending color in art, and post a daily image that illustrates its popularity. This week’s color is yellow.
This is your last chance to see the Mike Kelley show—it closes this weekend. AFC’s Paddy Johnson was disappointed with the way PS1 framed the work around childhood trauma, and most of us felt that the rooms were disjointed, with sketches and career achievements all mixed in the same pool.
Those issues aside, you may not see this much Mike Kelley work in one place again for a long time, and the work is a reminder of his critical influence over following generations. It’s hard to imagine artists like Sue De Beer and Laura Parnes, or Harry Dodge’s surreal psychological identity-bending narratives without Kelley’s exploration of the psychological undercurrent of pop culture.
Like, for example, the Banana Man, a character from a TV show from Kelley’s childhood. It’s one image in thousands that make up a much bigger picture of Kelley’s world. You have ’til Sunday.
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