Contemporary Art Evening Sale

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Lot 39
  • 39

Mike Kelley

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Description

  • Mike Kelley
  • Empathy Displacement: Humanoid Morphology (2nd and 3rd Remove) #8
  • acrylic on panel and handmade doll in wood box
  • Panel: 46 3/4 by 21 in. 118.7 by 53.3 cm.
  • Box: 17 3/4 by 8 1/2 by 4 3/4 in. 45 by 21.6 by 12 cm.
  • Executed in 1990.

Provenance

Rosamund Felsen Gallery, Santa Monica
Private Collection, Switzerland
Private Collection, Boston
Tracy Williams, Ltd., New York
Acquired by the present owner from the above

Exhibited

Santa Monica, Rosamund Felsen Gallery, Mike Kelley, 1992

Literature

Artpress, Mike Kelley, New York, 1992, pp. 38-39, illustrated (Rosamund Felsen Gallery installation)
Exh. Cat., New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, Mike Kelley, Catholic Tastes, 1993, p. 232, illustrated (Rosamund Felsen Gallery installation)

Catalogue Note

"The complete title is: Empathy Displacement: Humanoid Morphology (2nd and 3rd Remove). 2nd and 3rd Remove refers to the second and third removal from the platonic archetype of the human. The first removed would be your body. The second removed would be the doll. The third removed would be the image of the doll. So we're getting at some notion of the human only through a second and third remove, and even then there's all these levels of displacement. You realize that the whole function of empathy is displacement. That's what I was trying to do in these pieces." (Mike Kelley in Artpress, Mike Kelley, New York, 1992, p. 51)