Performance on Film: Mike Kelley's 'DAY IS DONE'

We are excited to present a new summer film series dedicated to ‘Performance on Film’ at Hauser & Wirth 18th Street.

Celebrating a long tradition of Hauser & Wirth artists working in performance, the series will comprise selected works by artists represented by the gallery, as well as documentation from various past performances at Hauser & Wirth’s New York and Los Angeles locations and two world premieres from artists outside the gallery’s roster.

Screenings will take place over two weeks this summer, Thursday 11 July to Wednesday 17 July. All screenings are free and open to the public; however, due to limited space, reservations are required.

All screenings are free and open to the public; however, due to limited space, reservations are required. Please register for each film individually.

Thursday 11 July
7.30 pm

‘DAY IS DONE’
by Mike Kelley
Courtesy of Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York and the Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts, Los Angeles
2 hr 46 min

About Mike Kelley's 'DAY IS DONE'
Over the course of his four-decade career, ">span> (1954 – 2012) produced a provocative and rich oeuvre that conflates the highest and lowest forms of popular culture in a relentless critical examination of social relations, cultural identity and systems of belief. Through an extensive variety of media, including drawing, painting and sculpture, video and photography, performance, music and a formidable body of critical writing, Kelley sought to reveal the unexpected connections and contradictions of the American vernacular.

In ‘Day is Done,’ dancing Goths, singing vampires, hick story-tellers, malevolent barbers and the Virgin Mary populate Kelley’s conceptual musical. This hilarious and disturbing video, written and directed by Mike Kelley, with original music by Kelley and Scott Benzel and choreography by Kate Foley, explores American popular rituals and entertainments by weaving together 31 scenes based on high school yearbook photographs of extracurricular activities. As early as 2009, Kelley began to conflate his two major ongoing projects: The Extracurricular Activity Projective Reconstruction series—originally conceived as a 365-tape opus, one tape for each day of the year, 31 iterations of which constitute ‘Day is Done’—and the Kandors series.

Image: 'Day Is Done', 2005-2006 (production still) © Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts. All Rights Reserved / VAGA at ARS, NY, courtesy Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts