Mike Kelley
City 7
City 7
$300,000
2007 – 2009
Tinted urethane resin on illuminated base
Ed. 2/5 + 2 AP
32.4 x 50.2 x 50.2 cm / 12 ¾ x 19 ¾ x 19 ¾ in
A driving force in contemporary art, Mike Kelley produced an eclectic and prolific body of work during his four-decade long career, including photography, painting, sculpture, video, performance, music, curatorial projects, and a formidable body of critical and creative writing. His work conflates high and low forms of popular culture through an examination of social relations, cultural identity and systems of belief, which are underscored by Kelley’s idiosyncratic approach to art making.
A consummate example of Mike Kelley’s sculptural practice, ‘City 7’ builds on the motifs and themes explored by the artist in his acclaimed Kandor works—a series of sculptures depicting fantastical cityscapes enclosed beneath a glass dome. The imaginary cities—and the series’ title—were inspired by Superman. According to the legend, Superman’s father sent his son to Earth before their planet Krypton’s destruction, saving the child’s life but inadvertently sentencing Superman to a future of displacement, loneliness and longing.
‘One of the things that interested me the most about Kandor (an aspect of it that I did not discover until I received the Kandor image bank) is that there is no continuity in its depiction in Superman comics. The design of the city was never standardized, and the artists who illustrated the stories over the years depicted it in myriad ways. I was fascinated by the fact that there were many different versions of the same city. It was impossible to reconstruct Kandor; various partial and contradictory city views would have to be randomly patched together to create a composite version.’—Mike Kelley [1]
Kelley’s ‘City 7’ suggests an abandoned metropolis. Illuminated from below with a flaming yellow glow, fiery orange forms made of resin surge, undulate, and melt before the viewer’s eyes as though the city’s architecture were unfinished and caught in the liminal space of its own potential—growing and disappearing simultaneously. Notably, the city stands empty, devoid of human life—a loneliness akin to Superman’s relationship to Kandor and his experience of isolation from his people and home.
‘The finished bottles are visually opulent. They are illuminated from underneath, with electric lights hidden in their bases. In some cases, reflections inside the dome of the vessels produce amazing clouds of floating light, similar in effect to holograms.’—Kelley [2]
