Artist Mike Kelley found dead in Los Angeles home

LOS ANGELES — Mike Kelley, the daring and influential contemporary installation artist who counted the band Sonic Youth and artist Paul McCarthy among his collaborators, has died, police said Wednesday. 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, without providing further information on the death. An autopsy was pending.

The artist's death brings a tragic end to a career empowered by both a punk-rock rebelliousness and pop-culture kitsch. Kelley famously filled art spaces with sculptures and unorthodox objects, and his solo exhibit "Catholic Tastes" at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York," which provocatively combined dolls, drawings and other objects, established him as a major figure in the art world in 1993.

"His work was widely collected and exhibited internationally," said Stephanie Barron, senior curator of modern art at Los Angeles County Museum of Art. "He had a voracious appetite for all kinds 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."

Bartl said authorities went to Kelley's home Tuesday after a concerned family friend went to the residence, and then called 911. The friend told investigators that Kelley had been depressed after recently breaking up with his girlfriend, but no note was found, Bartl said.

Kelley's work will be included in the upcoming 2012 Whitney biennial in New York.

In addition to "Catholic Tastes," other major solo exhibitions included 2004's "The Uncanny" at the Tate Liverpool in the United Kingdom and 2006's "Profondeurs Vertes" at the Louvre in Paris.

"Mike was an irresistible force in contemporary art," Kelley's studio, Gagosian Gallery, said in a statement that the Los Angeles Times published on its website. "We cannot believe he is gone. But we know his legacy will continue to touch and challenge anyone who crosses its path. We will miss him. We will keep him with us."

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

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