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Mike Kelley — Primordial Catholic
Mike Kelley

Primordial Catholic

A riotous tangle of organic forms and symbolic imagery rendered in colored pencil and ink, this work channels Kelley's preoccupation with repressed memory, institutional religion, and the psychic residue of childhood. The rawness of the drawing's execution evokes the unfiltered energy of outsider art while remaining deeply calculated in its critique of Catholic iconography and ritual. Primordial Catholic pulses with an unsettling tension between the sacred and the grotesque, reflecting Kelley's broader interrogation of cultural conditioning and collective trauma.

Medium
coloured pencil and ink on paper

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December 9, 2015

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About this work

Mike Kelley, Primordial Catholic

A riotous tangle of organic forms and symbolic imagery rendered in colored pencil and ink, this work channels Kelley's preoccupation with repressed memory, institutional religion, and the psychic residue of childhood. The rawness of the drawing's execution evokes the unfiltered energy of outsider art while remaining deeply calculated in its critique of Catholic iconography and ritual. Primordial Catholic pulses with an unsettling tension between the sacred and the grotesque, reflecting Kelley's broader interrogation of cultural conditioning and collective trauma.

Medium
coloured pencil and ink on paper
Seen at
Phillips, New York, London, Hong Kong

Related themes

Postmodern Art, Coloured Pencil And Ink, Outsider Art Influence, Colored Pencil And Ink, Male Artist, Pencil And Ink, Religious Imagery, Conceptual Art, Contemporary Artist, Figurative Drawing, American Artist, Dark And Unsettling, Figurative Art, Subversive Art, Late 20th Century, Works on Paper, Underground Aesthetic, Religious Iconography, Neo-Expressionism, Dark Humor

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