 
John Kelly, left, Self Portrait as Antonin Artaud,; right, Self Portrait (Cupid), both from The Mirror Stages: Self-Portraits, 1979-2009.
 
John Kelly, left, Self Portrait after Bellini, 1996, Oil on canvas, 18 x 16", right, Mona, 2005, Ink on panel, 20 x 16", both from The Mirror Stages: Self-Portraits, 1979-2009.
 
John Kelly, left, Waldemar, 2005, Oil on canvas, 25 x 18": right, Egon, 2005, Ink on panel, 20 x 16", both from The Mirror Stages: Self-Portraits, 1979-2009.
 
John Kelly, left, Self Portrait after Durer, 1996, Oil on canvas, 18 x 16"; right, John Kelly, both from The Mirror Stages: Self-Portraits, 1979-2009.
John Kelly, Self Portrait after Caravaggio, 2005, Oil on canvas, 22 x 22", from The Mirror Stages: Self-Portraits, 1979-2009. |
|
Alexander Gray Associates
526 West 26 Street #1019
212-399-2636
New York
John Kelly, The Mirror Stages:
Self-Portraits, 1979-2009
May 20-June 26, 2009
Since emerging on the East Village club scene in the early 1980s, John Kelly’s enigmatic performance work has been presented at international venues and festivals. His performance work, blending elements of dance, story-telling, song and experimental theater, draw from fictional and historical figures and subject matter ranging from the fall of the Berlin Wall and the AIDS crisis to German Expressionist film. The cast of characters he has developed since the 1980s has morphed personal narrative with stylized and celebrated notables from Art History and culture, including the Mona Lisa, Caravaggio, Martha Graham, Egon Schiele, Jean Cocteau, and musical sources as varied as Gustav Mahler, Joni Mitchell, Robert Schumann, and Maria Callas.
A relatively unknown part of Kelly’s practice is his work as a visual artist. Since the 1970s, he has consistently created self-portraits, in the form of drawings, paintings, photographs and, more recently, with video. The studio time devoted to making these artworks is often a core part of the development of subsequent performance works. In the gallery exhibition, over 40 self-portraits are hung, salon-style, creating a portrait hall of Kelly’s many personae and faces, expressions and phases. Together, they show Kelly’s sensitivity as a draftsman and painter, while providing psychological and stylistic threads through thirty years of dance, theater and music.
Kelly has performed at hundreds of venues, including nightclubs, concert halls and museums. Kelly’s club performances, which expanded ideas of Drag and performance art, began in New York in the early 1980s at Mudd Club, Pyramid Club, Club 57, and Danceteria. He enjoyed further notoriety with his rendition of Joni Mitchell as the closing act of the legendary Wigstock festival (1986-2005). Theatrical venues include Brooklyn Academy of Music, Brooklyn; American Academy in Rome; Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center, The Kitchen, Dance Theater Workshop, Central Park Summerstage, PS 122, Creative Time, St. Mark’s Church, Joyce Theatre, New York; Yale Repertory Theatre, New Haven; Alley Theatre, Houston; and Spoleto Festival, Spoleto, Italy. Performances at museums include Walker Arts Center, Minneapolis; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; Baltimore Art Museum, Baltimore; and Tate Modern, London.
Kelly has been honored with numerous awards: including fellowships from National Endowment for the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, Guggenheim Foundation, Art Matters, and CalArts/Alpert Foundation. He has recieved an American Choreographer Award, a New York Dance and Performance Award (Bessie), and multiple Village Voice OBIE Awards for Performance. Residencies include Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University; Yaddo; MacDowell; and American Academy in Rome.
Concurrent with the exhibition at Alexander Gray Associates, he performs in New York on June 12, 2009, he appears in collaboration with David Del Tredici at Symphony Space. His tribute to Joni Mitchell, Paved Paradise Redux, is performed at Abrons Arts Center, June 18-21 and June 24-27, 2009, and includes a recreation of Mitchell’s PBS interview with Tavis Smiley, performed by Flotilla DeBarge. In 2010, he is artist-in-residence at Park Avenue Armory and Civatella Ranieri Center in Italy.
John Kelly, from The Mirror Stages: Self-Portraits, 1979-2009. |
