Stopgap Measures presents an exciting selection of essays, interviews and shorter pieces on the work of American artist Mike Kelley (1954–2012) written over more than three decades by the noted art historian and cultural critic John C. Welchman.
Kelley’s provocative career gave rise to some of the most conceptually and materially diverse work of recent times— in performance, writing, painting, drawing, sculpture, banners, multimedia installation, appropriated objects and images and video, as well as numereous collaborations. This volume includes reflections on specific works, and features a signature series of pathbreaking essays on Kelley’s innovations in photography and writing as well as explorations of major themes in his practice, research and thinking: physical comedy and verbal humor; memory; popular culture, dress-up and Americana; the uncanny; imaginative projection and dark fantasy; appropriation and giving; authorship and self-construction; and the artist’s littleremarked upon negotiation with the histories of and ideas about Asia. The book concludes with new essays on Kelley’s engagement with animals and the nonhuman; and on the refrain disappearances that punctuate Kelley’s career set in relation to specters of social catastrophe and nuclear annihilation.