Photo By Teddy K.
New York City never fails to deliver when it comes to street art — even when it’s unintentional. Case in point: this week’s Pink Thing of the Day, spotted on Avenue B between East 3rd and 4th Streets. Here we find a once-loved, now forsaken Fuzzy Pink Teddy Bear, perched dramatically atop a pile of black garbage bags like a plush monarch surveying its trash kingdom. Continue reading Pink Thing of The Day: Abandoned Pink Teddy Bear
All Photos By Gail
In 1987, American artist Mike Kelley (1954 –2012), known for his provocative and often unsettling artworks exploring themes of American popular culture, childhood, and trauma, began to make sculptures from stuffed animals. Kelley described the toys as “the adult’s perfect model of a child”– cute, clean, sexless.” However, Kelley’s plush toys, purchased secondhand from thrift stores and yard sales, were discarded and soiled from use. Seemingly beyond redemption, they are darkly humorous monuments to lost innocence and repressed emotions.
Continue reading Mike Kelley’s Deodorized Central Mass with Satellites
Photos By Gail
A kitsch klatch of thrift shop yarn dolls and stuffed animals get the yearbook photo treatment alongside the genuine article (featuring the artist himself) in Mike Kelley’s lineup of misfit mug shots entitled Ah . . . Youth! (1991). The artist’s self-charicature compares his apathetic, acne-scarred, adolescent self to the cuddly but creepy castoffs in a fractured fairytale about youth.
Continue reading Modern Art Monday Presents: Mike Kelley, Ah. . .Youth!