Mike Kelley’s burlesque masterpiece, Day Is Done, is a work in progress conceived in three hundred and sixty-five separate chapters. Chapters 2 to 32 were staged as a complex and spectacular mixed-media installationwhich Kelley scripted, scored, shot and sculptedat Gagosian Gallery, New York, in 2005. To mark the first stage of this ambitious project, Kelley has edited an elaborate visual catalogue of Chapters 2-32. This richly illustrated book includes video stills and installation views, Kelley's libretto and selected writings and notes on key aspects of the project, and a critical review by John Welchman.
Each video chapter imaginatively reconstructs scenes from photographs of extracurricular activity” that Kelley found in high school yearbooks. Over many years he has collected hundreds of such images and grouped them into categories referring to common forms of folk entertainment: plays, thematic costume days, holiday festivities, religious spectacles, hazing rituals, and so on. Though not a standard narrative, Day Is Done features recurring characters and some semblance of narrative flow in a provocative look at the formative effects of school on the adolescent psyche.
