Arcana:

(KELLEY, MIKE). Kelley, Mike & Scott Benzel. New York: Gagosian Gallery, 2005. First Edition. 12mo. CD + Insert in Jewel Box. Audio CD. As New. np, profusely illustrated in b&w and color. This is an audio CD of music composed by Mike Kelley and Scott Benzel for the 2005 New York gallery exhibition of the artist's "Day is Done" - a feature-length "musical" composed of thirty-two separate video chapters. "Each section is a live-action recreation of a photograph of an "extracurricular activity" found in a high school yearbook. Over the years Mike Kelley has collected hundreds of such images and arranged them into rough categories. Most of the imagery is immediately recognizable as standard forms of folk entertainment: plays, follies, theme dress-up days, holiday festivities, religious spectacles, hazing rituals, etc. Such activities serve as carnivalesque disruptions of the normal school schedule, mirroring the function of such events in the broader cultural arena. Many of them, such as Halloween and Christmas-related activities, are secular outgrowths of pagan ritual. "Day is Done" is multipart with iconography derived from the image files Kelley has labeled such as: religious performances, thugs, dance numbers, hicks, and hillbillies, Halloween and gothic style, satanic imagery, and equestrian events. The artist chose to work with such a diverse set of images in order to force himself to create a longer, more complex, video work somewhat akin to traditional filmic narratives employing montage. Though not a traditional narrative, "Day is Done" employs recurring characters, intimations of simultaneous action, and some semblance of narrative flow. "Day is Done" will exist in several different forms. This one being a large-scale video installation consisting of sets and projection screens. Various scenes will be programmed to turn off and on prompting the viewer to follow the action throughout the presentational space. Several scenes will run simultaneously in order to promote the effect of filmic cross-cutting in actual space". A brand new, pristine example of the soundtrack CD - not to be confused with the massive hardbound exhibition catalogue of the same title - still in the publisher's shrinkwrap. Inventory Number: 020880