Tyree Guyton, who has turned Detroit homes into art objects with an international following, encountered another local home that is receiving attention from the global art community, thanks to Fox 2's Charlie LeDuff.
Guyton visited the model of the Westland home that Mike Kelley grew up in. It's an art object, too.
Opening Saturday at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit on Woodward in Midtown is Kelley's Mobile Homestead, a permanent replica of Kelley's childhood ranch house in Westland, a place he fled in the early seventies The New York Times recently called the house a work of public art "which will go down as one of the most provocative and unclassifiable in America."
While little known in Detroit, Kelley attended the University of Michigan and went on to Los Angeles, where he became a world famous artist. He committed suicide last year.
"Kelley, like Guyton, used dolls and quilts and found objects in his work. You might say Guyton and Kelley are cut from the same cloth, the same age from the same soil, except Kelley's pieces sell for millions," LeDuff reports.
"The house, Kelly wrote, expressed his feelings about suburbia. "One had to hide his true desire and beliefs behind a facade of social acceptable lies. The work could become just another ruin in a city full of ruins."
Guyton liked what he saw. "I see me," Guyton said. "Fire consumed my old. Michael left something new, and I will build anew. And his will grow old and so will mine. This is the city in a metaphor. It is perfect."
Previously in Deadline Detroit: The New York Times on Mike Kelley's house.
