Wiels has the privilege to organise, for the first time since 10 years, a large retrospective of the eminent contemporary artist Mike Kelley. This major exhibition’s starting point is one artwork : Educational Complex (1995). An architectural model composed of the replicas of every school Kelley attended (with the areas he couldn’t remember left blank), this fiction marks a new direction in the artist’s work, which he has explored and questioned ever since. With this work, Kelley opened a new path related to memory and autobiography, which has become his privileged means to pursue the deconstruction of systems and structures he initiated in the late 70’s.
The retrospective consist of nine large installations, one of which has never been exhibited before, six sculptures, dozens of paintings and photographs accompanied by archives, which for the larger part have only been exhibited in prestigious galleries around the world. Presented and documented in a catalogue together for the first time, these works will offer a multiple yet coherent landscape, which will allow the public to discover the thematic and formal stakes of Mike Kelley’s work.