The Mike Kelley Foundation presents solo exhibition Framed and Frame at London’s Hauser & Wirth, opening September 23 running to November 19.
This will be the gallery’s first UK exhibition devoted to the Los Angeles artist and presents the 1999 installation ‘Framed and Frame (Miniature Reproduction ‘Chinatown Wishing Well’ built by Kelley after ‘Miniature Reproduction ‘Seven Star Cavern’ Built by Prof. H.K. Lu’)’.
The installation “takes Los Angeles’ marginalised Chinese American community as its inspiration” and explores “the conceptual space between real and imagined places” by recreating a local landmark in the Chinatown of downtown LA. It consists of two separate sculptures divided by a wall and is a ‘wishing well’ in “the form of a biomorphic, concrete, grotto-like landscape, covered with spots of spray-painted colour and cheap religious statuary and tossed coins on its ledges and niches”.
For Kelley, the wishing well “projects the narrative of the Chinese-American community in Los Angeles, a story of persecution and exclusion, but also of cultural resilience and exchange”.
See the Hauser & Wirth website for more details.**
Mike Kelley, ‘Framed and Frame (Miniature Reproduction “Chinatown Wishing Well”)’ (1999), Installation detail. Courtesy Hauser and Wirth.
