Mary Reid Kelley’s videos are defined by their erudite dialogue and a distinct visual style: Performers wear bulging eyes, and their bodies are painted in thick black outlines that make them look like animations or cartoons. Often working with her partner, Patrick Kelley, the artist films in black and white, alluding to the past and paring down her time-based medium as though attempting to reduce its dimensionality.
Kelley’s films include You Make Me Iliad (2010), The Syphilis of Sisyphus (2011), and Blood Moon (2021). Women’s roles are a frequent theme, though the artist’s sources range from Greek mythology and French philosophy to histories of World War I and John Steinbeck’s 1937 novel Of Mice and Men. Kelley also makes prints and watercolors that riff on her films’ characters and ideas.
Like Lynch’s work, Kelley’s films embrace a kind of dream logic. Their characters use off-kilter, antiquated language, often speaking in verse and rhyme. These speech patterns suggest an otherworldliness, though the sentiments expressed remain very much of our world.