Mike Kelley\'s Educational Complex and Pedagogical Trauma (Exhibition Catalogue Essay)

Mike Kelley’s Educational Complex (1995) plots the artist’s educational history through a series of architectural models. The stark white foam core structures are an amalgamated self-portrait of Kelley’s artistic genealogy filtered through the educational institutions that shaped his work and presence in the artworld. The exhibition Educational Complex Edit, presented at TAG UWF at the University of West Florida in February 2013, takes its title from Kelley’s work. The exhibition presents a selection ofartworks created by Kelley’s graduate students during their time at Arts Center College of Design in Pasadena under his tutelage. Significantly, Educational Complex marked a shift from mimetic forms of abjection in Kelley’s practice towards a formal and thematic interest in artistic pedagogical genealogy andpedagogical trauma. The timing of Educational Complex coincided with Kelley’s tenure at Arts Center from 1992 to 2007. Thus, the work serves as an apt totem for the exhibition in which curator Joseph Herring (also a student of Kelley in the early 2000’s) explores the artist’s own pedagogical legacy.