Foul Perfection

The work of artist Mike Kelley (b. 1954) embraces performance, installation, drawing,painting, video, and sculpture. Drawing distinctively on high art and vernacular traditions,including historical research, popular culture, and psychology, Kelley came to prominence in the1980s with a series of sculptures composed of craft materials. His recent work offers dialogues witharchitecture and with repressed memory syndrome, and a sustained inquiry into his own aesthetic andsocial history. The subjects on which Kelley has written are as varied as his artistic media. Theyinclude the work of fellow artists, sound, caricature, the uncanny, UFOlogy, and gender-bending.Thisbook offers a diverse collection of Kelley's writings from the last twenty-five years. It containsmajor critical texts on art, film, and the wider culture, including his piece on the aesthetic hecalls "urban Gothic." It also contains essays, mostly commissioned for exhibition catalogs andjournals, on the artists and groups David Askevold, i??yvind Fahlstri??m, Douglas Huebler,John Miller, Survival Research Laboratories, and Paul Thek, among others. Kelley's voices arepassionate, analytic, and ironic, and his critical intelligence is leavened with touches ofwhimsy.

John C. Welchman is Professor of Modern Art History in the Visual Arts Department at the University of California, San Diego.