Mike Kelley: Exploded Fortress of Solitude

A catalogue documenting the last two exhibitions of new work by American artist Mike Kelley, held in 2011 at Gagosian Gallery in Los Angeles and London. Mike Kelley made nostalgia, memory, and repression in everyday life the topics of his idiosyncratic sculptures, performances, paintings, and installations, which conflate vernacular sources and high modernist aesthetics. A veteran of the Los Angeles conceptual art scene, Kelley used deconstructive strategies in order to challenge the established norms of contemporary culture, both high and low.Jeffrey Sconce is an associate professor in the department of radio, television, and film at Northwestern University and the author of Haunted Media: Electronic Presence from Telegraphy to Television (2000).