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As part of the “Walk of Art” of the St. Moritz Art Masters, there’s an installation of “Kandor” videos by American artist Mike Kelley. Kandor is the capitol of comic book hero Superman’s home planet Krypton. According to the Superman myth, Kandor is the only remnant of the exploded planet and the city is preserved – in a reduced state – in a bottle in Superman’s possession. The appearance of Kandor in the comic books vary widely throughout the years. For his “Kandor” series, Mike Kelley reconstructed ten unique versions of Kandor. The Kandor series comprises sculptures (bell jars with the miniature version of Kandor), lenticular lightboxes, and videos (previously shown at Jablonka Gallery, Berlin). In the Gym Schoolhouse of St. Moritz, the large-scale videos are on display, focusing on the bell jars, the interiors of which have been activated with swirling patterns of light or atmospheric effects.

Mike Kelley was born in Detroit in 1954. Kelley has degrees from California Institute of the Arts and the University of Michigan. His work has been exhibited extensively, with solo shows at Musée du Louvre, Paris (2006); Tate Liverpool (2004); the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (1993). He currently lives and works in Los Angeles.

Mike Kelley: “Kandors”, Gym Schoolhouse. Courtesy: Jablonka Gallery, Berlin. St. Moritz Art Masters, August 21, 2009.

PS: Review of St. Moritz Art Masters by Stefan Kobel at Artnet (in German).

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In a comprehensive exhibition The Goetz Collection is showing more than 40 works by American artist Mike Kelley. The spectrum ranges from early paintings from 1976 to large installations from his Kandors series of 2007, and shows the wide variety of the artist’s media through selected individual projects. Several large installations, in some cases with elaborate video projections, are complemented by a series of drawings, an audio installation, sculptures and numerous videos.

Works by Mike Kelley were first shown at Sammlung Goetz in 2000 jointly with works by Peter Fischli and David Weiss. Following further purchases in recent years, Ingvild Goetz has built up one of the largest private collections of Mike Kelley’s works worldwide. This now makes it possible to put on a wide-ranging exhibition of individual works by one of the most important artists of the present day, following a curatorial concept that he himself developed.

The exhibition runs until April 25, 2009. Video by Gürsoy Dogtas.

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