Los Angeles Times

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Circulation 723,181
June 10, 2010
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Baby Ikki is more than

30 years old, but he
retains a childlike,
Swee' Pea innocence,
just like his animated
cartoon forebear from
Popeye's "Thimble
Theater." Hairy legs
emerging from pristine
white diapers and five
o'clock shadow around
a pacifier protruding
from his mouth, Ikki
offers obliquely mature
assurance that he'll
survive whatever slings
and arrows of
outrageous fortune are
thrown his way.

In a sprawling, sometimes stupefying warehouse exhibition in Eagle Rock, a collision between

feigned innocence and hare-brained Utopianism is stark and destabilizing. Six video projections
show Baby Ikki wandering wide-eyed through the six-day madhouse that is the annual Burning
Man festival in the Black Rock desert of northwest Nevada. Since New York performance artist
Michael Smith has been doing his Ikki-schtick for more than three decades, the deadpan openness
of the overgrown infant's exploratory excursions never falters, whatever the chaos.

An exceptional collaboration with L.A.artist Mike Kelley, "A Voyage of Growth and Discovery"
was born of a chance encounter in Italy five or six years ago, although the two artists have known
one another for years. The gallery West of Rome, which has recently switched from a peripatetic
commercial venue into a nonprofit presenter of public projects, has commandeered Kelley's
expansive studio in a former storage building for the mixed-media extravaganza.
Rarely is satire so marvelous and bug-eyed. Rather like Samuel Butler's "Erewhon" a century ago,
"A Voyage of Growth and Discovery" is a sharp stick in the eye of the Calvinist moral hangover of
American Victorianism, which we still stumble through today.

Amid seven sculptural

constructions, including
a giant Ikki totem
assembled from trash,
the six screens are
suspended in a circle
just overhead, like video
thought-bubbles.
Aluminum open-frame
sculptures recall
monkey bars and other
playground equipment.
These are stylistically
crossed with idealized
forms from Modern art
history -- a squat,
Buckminster Fuller-
style geodesic dome, say, or a Constructivist information tower by the likes of the Russian avant-
garde's Gustav Klucis or Stenberg brothers. A tall, ladder-like rocket ship looks like salvage from
1950s Disneyland.

The artists' constructed environment is less pastoral "Walden" than "The Happiest Place on Earth" --
a fictional environment shot through with yearning and disappointment. All the sculptures are
adorned with familiar Kelley attributes -- handmade quilts, a "granny dress" redolent of 1960s
peace-and-love and stuffed animals like those adults give to kids as tokens of sublimated affection.
Suspended from the rocket is a linked chain of plush toys that recalls Kelley's classic 1987
sculpture, "Kundalini and Chakra Set." Childhood innocence is infused with an adult Tantric image
of free-love. Fly me to the moon, indeed.

Nearby, a rusted VW micro-bus with the side-door open is parked in front of a row of 10 portable
toilets. Inside, a throne upholstered with filthy plush-toys curdles any romantic ambiance of open-
hearted innocence. As at most carnivals, the atmosphere feels creepy. No wonder the van has four
flat tires.

Footage of Baby Ikki at the Burning Man festival slides back and forth between the broken-down
cheesiness of blinding, desert daylight and the tribal orgy of darkness, where fire-twirlers compete
with strippers and a monumental sculpture representing modern man is set ablaze. Apocalyptic
sound from the video becomes hysterical and deafening, a quintessential primal scream signifying
nightmares as much as ecstatic release. Kelley and Smith heighten this therapeutic pastiche by
turning the show's outer lobby into a child psychiatrist's waiting room. Stacks of parenting
magazines litter a coffee table, along with one well-thumbed copy of Vanity Fair.

For those seeking novelty, "A Voyage of Growth and Discovery" might disappoint. Smith and
Kelley have explored these motifs since the 1980s, while the powerfully effective video-plus-
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sculpture format was the fulcrum for Kelley's terrific 2005 "Day is Done" -- a high school musical
performed as installation art. But American society's enforced infantilism is no less rich a subject
now than it has ever been. This is one painful voyage destined to spin its wheels.
--Christopher Knight
@twitter.com/KnightLAT

West of Rome at the Farley Building, 1669 Colorado Blvd., Eagle Rock, (626) 793-1504, through
Aug. 26. Closed Mon. and Tues. www.westofrome.org

Photos: Michael Smith & Mike Kelley, "A Voyage of Growth and Discovery;" Credit: West of
Rome; installation, Fredrik Nilsen, production still: Malcolm Stuart