Contemporary artist Mike Kelley dies at 57

LOS ANGELES -- Mike Kelley, the daring and influential contemporary installation artist, has died. He was 57.

Kelley's body was found at his home Tuesday night and it appeared he had committed suicide, South Pasadena Police Sgt. Robert Bartl said. He gave no further information on the death, and an autopsy is pending.

In a career empowered by both a punk-rock rebelliousness and pop-culture kitsch, Kelley famously filled art spaces with sculptures and unorthodox objects. His solo exhibit "Catholic Tastes" at the Whitney Museum of American Art in Manhattan, which provocatively combined dolls, drawings and other objects, established him as a major figure in the art world in 1993.

"He had a voracious appetite for all kinds of art," said Stephanie Barron, senior curator of modern art at Los Angeles County Museum of Art. "He was enormously curious and worked incredibly at his craft. He was never afraid to think really big. Artists like that don't come around very often."

Kelley's work will be included in the upcoming 2012 Whitney biennial this spring.

Kelley's notable works included a life-size re-creation of his childhood home on wheels, a tiny rendition of Superman's extraterrestrial birthplace encased in a glass jug, and several spherical sculptures made of stuffed animals.

He erected a life-size Colonel Sanders statue alongside a miniature Sigmund Freud at the Gagosian in Los Angeles last year and was influenced by old yearbooks for a sprawling 2005 exhibition at Manhattan's Gagosian Gallery. That show featured a 15-foot-long missile called the "gospel rocket."

"His works often violated notions of so-called good taste and blurred the boundaries between art, music and popular culture," Barron said.