Memory Ware Flats
A Hug From THe Art WOrld, New York, 2021
A Hug From The Art World is proud to present Memory Ware Flats, Eric Doeringer’s third solo exhibition with the gallery. Doeringer’s Memory Ware Flats are inspired by a series of works created by artist Mike Kelley between 2000 and 2010. For this series, Kelley adopted the technique of memory ware - a folk art in which household items (usually plates, pitchers, or other kitchenware) are covered with small personal items like keys, buttons, and earrings. Kelley used this technique to create large wall works he titled Memory Ware Flats as well as freestanding sclupture.
Doeringer’s Memory Ware Flats add a second layer of appropriation to Kelley’s original reuse of a folk art genre. The three works in the exhibition mimic the scale, color schemes, and presentation of three specific Memory Ware Flats by Mike Kelley. However, Doeringer has made no attempt to match the actual items or layouts of the originals (other than the general Pollock-esque “all over” compositions). This muddles the question of whether these works are “copies” of Mike Kelley’s artworks, “original” works by Doeringer, or whether both artists are “copying” the work of anonymous artisans.
Ralph Rugoff writes, “The Memory Ware Flats in particular appear to emphasize decorative surface effects and to maintain a content-neutral demeanor. But the borrowed aesthetic Kelley deployed in the series is best understood as part of a labyrinth in which intricate paths of ideas and allusions intersect and circle back upon one another… Kelley’s Memory Ware project can also be understood as an extended chapter in the artist’s long engagement with reusing, repurposing, and re-contextualizing materials and ideas, including those associated with his own earlier production.” Doeringer’s work continues and expands upon this interest in the ways that artists can construct alternate histories and how existing objects can be imbued with new meanings by being placed into new contexts.
