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Arts & Entertainment

Renowned Highland Park Artist Mike Kelley Found Dead

Mike Kelley, whose art career blossomed in the late 80s and early 90s from his Highland Park studio, was found dead in his South Pasadena home on Tuesday.

Renowned Artist Mike Kelley, whose career blossomed in the early 1990s from his Annan Way Studio, was found dead in his South Pasadena home on Tuesday, the L.A. Times reports. 

Kelley was 57-years-old.

Police are still investigating the cause of death, the article says.

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While studying at the University of Michigan, Kelley formed the influential punk rock band Destroy All Monsters. But his career really took off in the early 1990s, with solo shows at the Whitney, LACMA, and other international venues, according to Blouin ArtInfo.

"Kelley's style isn't so much a look as it is a feel, a groove that combines roots in conceptual art and an unashamed intellectuality with a sensibility steeped in funk," Glenn O'Brien wrote in an Interview article.

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In the late 80s, Kelley settled in Highland Park at the corner of North Figueroa Street and Annan Way, where he established his studio compound.

A decade later, in an interview with the Italian Magazine Mousse, Kelley explained the his feelings about his studio in Highland Park, as opposed to the new home he had recently built in South Pasadena. 

From Mousse:

I asked Mike Kelley what sort of relationship he has with his two houses, and he answered that the Figueroa house is still his mental space, which is why his music and his art books have stayed there. On the other hand, during the process of renovating and furnishing the new house, Mike referred to the latter as “the sculpture”: an enclosure with a keen focus on form, meant to hold the space dedicated to daily life.

Kelley's work will be included in the upcoming Whitney Biennial in New York, which opens March 1.

 

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