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Collage of five diverse artworks from the Hammer Museum Collections side by side. From left to right: 1) Contemporary painting of two embracing figures with surreal elements. 2) Post-impressionist style painting of trees with vibrant blues and greens. 3) Black and white illustration of a face with intricate patterns. 4) Japanese woodblock print style image of a figure in a checkered robe. 5) Photograph of a couple dancing, the woman in a black dress and the man in white

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Digital Archive Take It or Leave It: Institution, Image, Ideology
Art Mike Kelley, Notebook Drawings (Related to Educational Complex)
Notebook Drawings (Related to Educational Complex), by Mike Kelley, 1994

Mike Kelley, Artist
Notebook Drawings (Related to Educational Complex) , 1994

Medium
Ink on paper
Dimensions
8 1/2 x 11 in. (21.6 x 27.9 cm)
Credit Line
Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts. Image courtesy of Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts (photo by Robert Wedemeyer)

In the Educational Complex project (1995–2008)—a multifaceted work that resulted in numerous and varied objects—Mike Kelley sought to recall and represent the architecture of every school he had attended, labeling the parts he couldn't remember as "repressed spaces," in a nod to the theory that we often unwittingly blot out traumatic events. In this early suite of drawings from his notebook, Kelley offers up diagrams, notes, and explicit cartoons, punctuated by informal and occasionally off-color annotations, amounting to a complex, unblushing portrait of the interrelationship between system and subject.