Tate Modern, recently opened the first major UK exhibition of American artist Mike Kelley. The exhibit spans Kelley’s entire career, and the experimental worlds he created through color and craft.

Mike Kelley: Ghost and Spirit surveys the artist’s life and the creative influence he had throughout his career, up until his death in 2012. Fascinated with the world around him, and constantly questioning societal structures, Kelley’s art was revolutionary and forward-thinking, exploring topics of gender, capitalism, family structure, and addiction. 

The visual artist and musician worked across mediums, from drawing and collage, to video and multimedia, crafting work that was often called “dark pop art.” Heavily influenced by contemporary popular culture, Kelley took inspiration from the media that was being produced around him, from music to movies, using his art as commentary of the current social climate.

In the 1990s, Kelley’s work was extremely radical. He used his own artistic process to question the normalcy of painting and sculpture, which, to him, was a form of masculinity that did not always need to be present within the works. Kelley instead chose to use familiar items such as stuffed animals, crochet afghans, and second hand toys to share his ideas on society, often twisting these playful, youthful pieces and giving them a darker undertone.

At the time, fashion, music, art, and culture were all intersecting and inspiring one another, with Kelley’s work being used as a cover for art punk band Sonic Youth’s 1992 album, Dirty. The style was a big step from the maximalist culture of excess that dominated the ‘80s. The Ahh…Youth photographs feature thrift shop yarn dolls and stuffed animals in a yearbook style layout. 

While Kelley was heavily inspired by culture of the time, he always remained dedicated to underground subculture, with his work often portraying philosophical and existential questions about social norms and binaries. These ideas were a guiding force in his work throughout all of his career, and though it’s been over a decade since his passing, feel all the more relevant in today’s cultural climate as we watch the struggle for ultimate power in this country, and look for answers as to why and how we got here in the first place. Mike Kelley, who always used his art to challenge the status quo, encourages us to question everything.

‘Mike Kelley: Ghost and Spirit’ is organized by Tate Modern in collaboration with Bourse de Commerce, Paris, K21, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Dusseldorf and Moderna Museet, Stockholm. The exhibition is on view now through March 2025.