Missing Time Color Exercise #2, 1998
Acrylic on wood, magazines
119 x 232 cm
Private Collection

Missing Time Color Exercise (Reversed) No. 2, 2002
Acrylic on wood panels, magazines, wood, and plexiglas
121 x 234 cm
Collection Gian Enzo Sperone, New York. Courtesy Sperone Westwater LLC

For his 1998 Missing Time Color Exercises, Kelley took as a departure point his partially complete set of the magazine Sex to Sexty, which had first caught his attention as a teenager. He arranged the magazines in chronological grids, representing each missing issue with a painted panel. Revisiting laborious art school colour assignments, Kelley based each panel’s colour on that of a neighbouring magazine, either pulling out a specific shade or adopting its overall tonality.