Deodorized Central Mass with Satellites

American (1954-2012)

Deodorized Central Mass with Satellites, 1991/1999

Plush toys sewn over wood and wire frames with styrofoampacking material, nylon rope, pulleys, steel hardware andhanging plates, fiberglass, car paint, and disinfectant

In 1987 Mike Kelley began to make sculptures from stuffed animals, which he described 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 trauma.

Deodorized Central Mass with Satellites was among Kelley’s last works to feature stuffed animals. The toys are clustered in a cellular arrangement of one “central mass” and 13 “satellites.” To avoid eliciting an emotional or sentimental response from viewers, Kelley sewed the animals face-in. They are surrounded by 10 brightly colored, abstract sculptures the artist called “deodorizers,” which release a pine-scented mist into the air. By contrasting the degraded consequences of consumer excess with the slick, reductive forms of modernism, Kelley taunts the hierarchies between high art and mainstream culture, between obsessive hygiene and moral decline.