The Mirror Stages: Self-Portraits, 1979–2009

Alexander Gray Associates, May 20 – June 26, 2009

ABOUT

Since the 1970s, John Kelly has consistently created self-portraits, in the form of drawings, paintings, photographs, and video. The studio time devoted to making these artworks is often a core part of the development of subsequent performance works. In the gallery exhibition, over 40 self–portraits are hung, salon–style, creating a portrait hall of Kelly’s many personae and faces, expressions and phases. Together, they show Kelly’s sensitivity as a draftsman and painter, while providing psychological and stylistic threads through thirty years of dance, theater and music.

“The performance artist John Kelly is also, it turns out, a superb painter and draftsman, and his skills make this show of some 40 self-portraits a treat. In some of them, Mr. Kelly appears either as a pop cultural alter-ego (Maria Callas, Martha Graham, Joni Mitchell) or as an art historical superstar (Frida Kahlo, Egon Schiele, the Mona Lisa) done in-the-style-of style.” – Holland Cotter, The New York Times