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Pile Driving

Mike Kelley at Flag is the Daily Pic by Blake Gopnik

The Daily Pic: Mike Kelley paints carpet and goes grim in "Funny".

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(Courtesy Flag Art Foundation)

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Mike Kelley’s “Topo Gigio Topographical Model”, from a group show called “Funny” curated for the Flag Art Foundation in New York by Heidi Zuckerman Jacobson. Despite the exhibition’s title, few of the works at Flag yield a straightforward laugh, but as usual Kelly’s is more vexed even than others. This crude piece of crudely painted nylon carpet, framed-up as high art, is about both rec-rooms and Rothko, and thumbs its nose at both. (The wrong title was given for this work in an earlier version of the Daily Pic)

For a full visual survey of past Daily Pics visit blakegopnik.com/archive.

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