Inhalt
- Gallery in the Museum Brandhorst with works by Mike Kelley, Photo: Museum Brandhorst, Nicole Wilhelms © Mike Kelley
DAN FLAVIN AND MIKE KELLEY
TWO DIFFERENT STANCES IN AMERICAN ART
01.08.2011-29.02.2012
The renewed installation of the small exhibition rooms on the ground floor of the museum following the successful exhibition “Cy Twombly. Photographs 1951–2010” has provided us with an opportunity to present new works by Dan Flavin and Mike Kelley.
The suspense of displaying their works together has been consciously created. Whereas Flavin produced clear, psychologically indifferent and representational ‘visual objects’ with his industrially standardised fluorescent tubes, Kelley’s aim is to achieve the very opposite – namely to juggle with genres, styles and motifs, and play with established and popular culture. Through the overlapping of meanings and the clash of seemingly incompatible elements Kelley picks up on surrealistic methods that seek to shake up the profound and concealed.
These approaches also have an effect on the visitor. In Flavin’s case, people are not only actively and physically integrated in his work, but only on closer reflection do the illuminated fluorescent tubes become art. Kelley’s works on the other hand largely exist independently of the viewer and the way they are presented.