Artists in Residence

John Kelly

January 4, 2010 - January 3, 2011

John Kelly Self Portrait Fruit Boy 1
2007

John Kelly
John Kelly is a performance and visual artist whose creative work runs the gamut from mixed media dance theatre works, to vocal concerts, to exhibitions.  His work explores the character of creative genius as it occurs in the gradations between the ephemeral and the tangible.  Specific works have pondered Egon Schiele, Caravaggio, Antonin Artaud, Joni Mitchell, Barbette, Jean Cocteau; autobiography, the Berlin Wall, the Troubadours, the AIDS epidemic, and Expressionistic Film. These works have been performed at The Kitchen, PS 1, the Warhol Museum, the Whitney Biennial, The Tate Modern, and the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival.  Paintings, drawings, photographs and video works have been exhibited in galleries and museums including Alexander Gray Associates; the MIT LIst Visual Art Center; Philadelphia’s ICA; MACRO Museo d’Arte Contemporanea di Roma, Rome, Italy; Biagiotti Progetto Arte, Florence, Italy; New Museum of Contemporary Art.

Kelly has sung the music of John Cage at the San Francisco Symphony, and collaborated and recorded with Laurie Anderson, David Del Tredici, Natalie Merchant and Antony and the Johnsons.  He has just completed a collection of original songs, soon to be recorded, called ‘The Escape Artist. Writings include an autobiography ‘JOHN KELLY,’published by the 2wice Arts Foundation, in association with Aperture.  Acting credits include the Broadway production of ‘James Joyce’s The Dead,’ and films by John Turturro and James Franco. Awards and Fellowships include 2 Bessie Awards, 2 Obie Awards, an Alpert Award, and an Eliot Norton Award.  Fellowships include NYFA, the NEA, Art Matters, Inc., The Guggenheim Foundation, The Sundance Theatre Institute as Mass MoCA, The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, and the Rome Prize at the American Academy in Rome.  He is currently a 2010 Armory Artist in Residence at New York’s Park Avenue Armory.  Archive: www.johnkellyperformance.org

As an Armory Artist in Residence, John Kelly will be working on a number of projects, including:

-‘Company K~Salon Series’, series of events scheduled for February 25th; March 18th (future dates TBA).

-Visual Art Project #1: Installation in Company K, comprised of 50 black & white ink on panel portraits of military personnel discharged as a result of the U.S. Military’s ‘Don’t Ask Don’t Tell’ policy. Fall, 2010.

-Visual Art Project #2: ‘Muse Ascending A Staircase’, a series of video vignettes shot on location at the Park Avenue Armory. As a tangible follow up to Kelly’s career-long investigation of visual, kinetic and dramatic ‘character’, he will create a series of video vignettes, each focusing on a specific character from his repertoire. This project pays homage to Marcel Duchamp’s famous ‘Nude Descending A Staircase’, which caused a scandal at the 1913 Armory Show in New York City.

-Workshop/Rehearsal, COHESION: A solo dance choreographed for dancer Justin Leaf, commissioned through the Mc Knight Foundation’s ‘Solo’ Series.

-Workshop Performance #2: ‘The Escape Artist’, three performances of a solo performance work comprised of dramatic video renderings based on the paintings of Caravaggio, as seen through the eyes of a fallen trapeze artist. Includes 9 original songs by John Kelly & Carol Lipnik. Fall, 2010.

Click Here to view descriptions and photos of John Kelly’s work at the Armory.

2010 Awards for John Kelly:

2010 Time Warner Storytelling Fellowship, Sundance Institute Theatre Program at MASS MoCA, MA

2010 Artist In Residence, Civitella Ranieri Center, Italy

2010 Visual AIDS Vanguard Award

2010 Ethyl Eichelberger Award

2010 NEA American Masterpieces Award, for ‘Pass The Blutwurst, Bitte‘ 

2010 NEA American Masterpieces Award, for ‘Find My Way Home’

2010 Austin Critics’ Table Award, for ‘Paved Paradise Redux’

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