Exhibition

Mary Reid Kelley and Patrick Kelley: Blood Moon

September 24, 2021–April 3, 2022

Mary Reid Kelley and Patrick Kelley, in collaboration with The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia, Blood Moon (video still), 2021. Photo credit: Courtesy of the artists.

Mary Reid Kelley and Patrick Kelley are celebrated for video works featuring a distinctively graphic black-and-white palette and scripted narratives in rhyming verse full of punning wordplay by characters brought to life onscreen by Mary. Centered around two new film works—Blood Moon and I’m Jackson Pollock—the exhibition explores the mechanics of power and its fallibility, each film presented in an immersive world and experienced through a darkly funny lens.

In this world they have created, Mary and Patrick explore the nature of human relations in films where all of the characters have pumpkin heads—an ironically comedic twist that belies the violence of this imagined world in films grappling with the complexities and limits of desire. The first film of the exhibition, Blood Moon, explores interpersonal relationships in a scene inspired by Lennie and Curley’s wife from John Steinbeck’s seminal 1937 novella, Of Mice and Men. What initially appears as a tender exchange between new lovers takes a turn for the tragic and results in the gruesome yet comic end for our protagonists. The second, a monologue work titled I’m Jackson Pollock, brings to life the bombastic character embodiment of societal power, callowly hurling boastful claims in rhyming verse. The immersive installation is populated with props, sculptures, and projections that fill the world developed by the artists.

Location

The Fabric Workshop and Museum
First and Second Floors


Art in This Exhibition


Artists in This Exhibition


Downloadable Media and Related Links

Download the Press ReleaseDownload the Press Release


About the Artist

American, live in Olivebridge, NY.

The collaborative work of Mary Reid Kelley and Patrick Kelley has been featured in solo exhibitions at the Hammer Museum, SITE Santa Fe, and the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston. Their most recent exhibition, The Rape of Europa, opened at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in 2021. European solo exhibitions include Tate Liverpool, Kunsthalle Bremen, Museum M, Leuven, Studio Voltaire, and Neuer Kunstverein Wien. Their video work has been reviewed in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, W Magazine, La Reppublica, Vogue, The New Yorker, Artforum, Flash Art, Frieze, ARTnews, and Art in America.

Mary Reid Kelley earned a BA from St. Olaf College and an MFA from Yale University. She is a MacArthur Fellow and has received awards from the American Academy in Rome, the Rema Hort Mann Foundation, and the College Art Association. Major exhibitions include the Baltimore Museum of Art, SITE Santa Fe, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, and MUDAM, Luxembourg.

Patrick Kelley earned a BA from St. Olaf College and an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art. He is a recipient of the McKnight Foundation Artist Fellowship and has received awards from the Jerome Foundation and Anderson Ranch Arts Center. His works have shown at the Bibliothèque Publique d’Information-Centre Pompidou, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, Mykonos Bienniale, Athens International Film and Video Festival, and the Académie de France à Rome.

Mary Reid Kelley and Patrick Kelley are represented by Fredericks & Freiser in New York, Susanne Vielmetter Projects in Los Angeles, and Pilar Corrias in London.


About the Curator

Co-curated by Alec Unkovic, Exhibitions Manager, and Karen Patterson, Curator and Director of Exhibitions.


Support

Mary Reid Kelley and Patrick Kelley: Blood Moon is supported by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage. This project is also supported in part by The National Endowment for the Arts.


Past Related Events


Blood Moon Tour and Workshop
September 25, 2021, 1:30 pm to 3:00 pm


Blood Moon Tour and Workshop
September 25, 2021, 3:00 pm to 4:30 pm

Partner Event
Reading Terminal Market Harvest Fest: Soup! Soup! It’s fun for the group
October 2, 2021, 10:00 am to 4:00 pm

Workshop
DesignPhiladelphia: Pumpkin Head
October 15, 2021, 3:00 pm to 7:30 pm


2022 Convening
March 5, 2022, 11:30 am to 5:30 pm

Curator Tour and Print Workshop
Let me Trompe Your L’oeil
December 10, 2021, 6:00 pm to 7:30 pm