MIKE KELLEY, 1975–1994 Works, Me.di.um, St. Barthélemy, 2006

Mike Kelley — 1975–1994 Works
Edited by Richard Slovak
Text by Justin Lieberman
Me.di.um, St. Barthélemy, French West Indies, 2006
TNR-2026-0663

17 × 21.5 cm
88 pp.
Hardcover
25 colour and 24 black-and-white illustrations
ISBN 978-2-9526517-3-8

Compact exhibition catalogue published following Mike Kelley: 1975–1994 Works at Me.di.um, St. Barthélemy, a mini-retrospective deliberately restricting itself to the first two decades of Kelley's practice. The selection moves from the performance and drawing of the 1970s through his vernacular sculptures, found objects and stuffed-animal works of the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Justin Lieberman's accompanying essay proposes an unusual Kelley: not simply the exemplary Postmodern artist of appropriation, abjection and degraded culture, but an artist whose treatment of found toys, craft and discarded material remained deeply indebted to the formal conventions of Modernist sculpture.

The distinction is particularly clear in works such as Two Frogs and Two Cats, 1990, reproduced here. Handmade toys arrive already carrying histories of labour, affection, ownership and eventual abandonment. Kelley does not erase those histories. He relocates them.

A gift becomes discarded property.
Discarded property becomes material.
Material becomes sculpture.

The change occurs in placement.

A small but particularly concentrated publication from a period when Kelley's early work was being reconsidered alongside the increasingly monumental projects of his mature career.

Condition: Good. Light shelf and handling wear with rubbing and corner compression to boards; visible bumps at extremities. Internally clean from inspection. Issued without dust jacket.

The New Rare at Glue Book Fair 2026