Mike Kelley: Kandors at Hauser Wirth & Schimmel

This exhibition will be the most comprehensive survey to date of Mike Kelley’s late series inspired by the comic book tale of Kandor – the capital city of Krypton, birth planet of Superman. As the artist once explained, Kandor functions for Superman as ‘a perpetual reminder of his inability to escape the past, and his alienated relationship to his present world.’ Over the course of his four-decade career, Kelley conflated the highest and lowest forms of popular culture into a relentless critical examination of social relations, cultural identity, and systems of belief. While his Kandors series relates to the artist’s longstanding preoccupation with memory, trauma, and repression, these works are also powerful vehicles for the formal investigations of color, light, and scale that marked the last decade of the artist’s life. This extensive exhibition, which will occupy three galleries, includes numerous works shown for the rst time in Los Angeles; among these are the complex Kandor installations and the complete Lenticular series. Kelly’s ‘Kandor 10B (Exploded Fortress of Solitude),’ the series’ combined climax and coda, draws viewers to a discovery of Superman’s post-apocalyptic sanctum sanctorum.

Opening reception: Saturday 21 October, 6 – 9 pm