The Farley Building
1669 Colorado Blvd
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Art
West of Rome presents Mike Kelley and Michael Smith: A Voyage of Growth and Discovery
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Still from Mike Kelley and Michael Smith's A Voyage of Growth and Discovery. Courtesy of West of Rome
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- When
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May 26, 2010 – Aug 26, 2010
Wednesdays–Saturdays (noon–7pm)
Sundays (1–6pm)
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- Price
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“Mike Kelley is one of the most influential artists ever to come out of Los Angeles. Though he works across every imaginable genre from drawing to sculpture, installation, video, performance, photography, and the spaces in-between, overall his work champions the subversion of dominant paradigms in art, society, sex, and politics — by any means necessary. He repeatedly demonstrates a willingness to put both his body and ego in peril in the service of his aggressively unsettling vision. As a curator and public art advocate, Emi Fontana has a penchant for engineering large-scale projects in unusual or out-of-the-way places. A Voyage of Growth and Discovery is a six-channel video and sculpture installation that takes all this into account, as Fontana's West of Rome program presents the work in Kelley's Farley Building studio, where it was first conceived. This mesmerizing and immersive audio-visual assault follows the existential adventures of man-boy Baby Ikki, and his attempts to gain enlightenment at Burning Man — a smart choice for a grown man in a diaper and bonnet who wanted to go unnoticed.”
Shana Nys Dambrot, Flavorpill
Note:
Buy a copy of the film's soundtrack, Dance Beats for Baby, at Kelley's website.
West of Rome says:
A Voyage of Growth and Discovery is a collaborative video, sculpture, and sound installation by Mike Kelley and Michael Smith. The exhibition includes a six-channel video featuring Michael Smith's character Baby IKKI filmed at a festival in the Black Rock desert in 2008. Related sculptures fill the 15,500 square foot space surrounding a 30-foot tall junk sculpture of Baby IKKI.
