Robert Melee’s aesthetic,unapologetically cheesy, sensationalistic and confrontational, colors and plays with reality. It is not a distortion or a disguise of reality, but rather a buffer that allows Melee to confront the memories and consequences of his upbringing. His mother, Rose Melee’s, alcoholism grossly perverted what could have been a traditional suburban New Jersey childhood, and the aesthetic that Melee uses to describe this allows him to be both objective and subjective 1. Such a theatrical aesthetic does not indicate a psychologically distorted vision of the world; Melee is completely deliberate in his exaggeration of the truth. Melee’s aesthetic is his means of coolly downplaying the gravity of his past as he acknowledges and releases the many faces of his ghost, Rose Melee.

Melee calls the combination of truth and fantasy in his art “baloneyism,” defined to be “the conflation of the banal and the glamorous” 2. Melee says that he wanted the presentation of such personal and painful content to be “very nostalgic … and glamorous and stylized in a dopey, ridiculous over the top way.” 1 His signature “marbleization” technique and his bottlecap and noodle paintings are deliberately tacky. Melee admits, “I’m glamming it up … toying with the decorative idea … it’s intense and ugly- which I like- and there’s irony in some [of the pieces] like the corny way the colors fade in the bottlecap paintings.” 1 However, there is a profound psychological core behind his seemingly playful work and the disturbing imagery and aggressive yet nostalgic exploitation of his mother is endlessly complex.

Melee explains that his art is a result of “growing up in my environment, not having the best outlook and [now] trying to make the best out of it.” 1 The effect of his environment is hard to pin down, Melee’s detached and absurd portrayal of his past begs for us to both laugh and empathize with him 3. And though his abjectly disturbing portrayal of his mother is clearly a characterization, her inescapable presence in his psyche is equally chilling. Moreover, her actual presence in his art, indicating the consensual willingness of both mother and son to engage in sexual, degrading and exploitative acts, is most troubling of all. This fact is perhaps the most telling indicator of the dysfunction in Melee’s family. Melee’s ability to expose his mother in the way that he does, parading her naked and exaggerated to the public, also speaks to the distanced and objective position he has reached. This stance manifests itself in his aesthetic and his treatment of all subjects, no matter how bizarre or disturbed they may be. And it is this distance that allows Melee to insert carrots into a man’s anus and stab a paintbrush into his mother’s vagina with total indifference 4.

The content of Melee’s art, though theatrical, feels undeniably real, as if all events were seriously experienced and revisited 5. Melee’s art is pervasively nostalgic; perhaps his memory has been skewed by such a troubled psyche, but Melee’s art while loud and unpalatable often seems wistful and romantic. Melee’s films and photographs reference birthday parties and family vacations, and are often set in the house he grew up in, what he calls “the scary house.”1 Melee seals his framed photograph collages with a yellow slipcover, attributing what he calls “a nostalgic nicotine stained feel” to even the most haunting images1. This nostalgia is precisely the effect Melee seeks, purposely using aged film and unsophisticated super-8 black and white video to create films and photographs that feel like fuzzy memories. The camera handling in his films, hand-held, and shaky with blurred images and wrong angles, perfectly mimics the amateur home movie effect Melee desires 3. Even his stylized installations evoke that same feeling of nostalgia. Unit (2000) is an oversized entertainment unit designed and constructed by Melee himself [figure 1].

The pressed wood-grain Formica paneling energized with orange and green enamel houses fourteen television sets screening various “home movies” and numerous framed photographs of his mother and his friends 5. The unit itself, though highlighted in orange and green, feels undeniably familiar, resembling exactly what one would expect to find in any suburban recreation room. The wood paneling, vintage televisions and frames create a very familiar and accessible set up. The unplanned and natural feeling of the collection of frames of different sizes and materials conjures the image of one’s own home. Moreover, the lack of artifice in the films and photographs, being innocently unglamorous and messy, also channels that same nostalgia for one’s own home and family. Melee’s first created environment, his signature transformation of a space into a home recreation room, was Baloneyism (1996)1. Not only was it his first created environment, Melee says, “It was my first time using the wood paneling that I grew up with. Every time I see it, it freaks me out.”

This wood paneling is largely responsible for the nostalgic, familiar feel that makes the space a credible recreation room, despite its stylized aesthetic. Ultimately, despite the acidic color palette and theatrical presentation, all of Melee’s materials and constructions are familiar. The busy overabundance of frames, common wood paneling and seventies style furniture of Baloneyism, resemble that of all the homes one’s ever seen before. And this resemblance immediately triggers an innate feeling of nostalgia and comfort, despite the unsettling aesthetic.

While still in training at the School of Visual Arts in New York, Melee wanted to depict “static neurotic energy through geometric abstraction” but to address psychological states rooted in domestic life and family, Melee transitioned from geometric abstraction to household objects1. Melee’s curtains, such as Her Curtains (2002) [figure 2], are an example of his appropriation of household objects. The curtains not only reference home, but also the popular game show where contestants are to decide if it will be curtain number one, two or three that they will choose 6. Her Curtains are stiff, colored and glossed, exhibiting that same glamorization of the banal. The static curtain folds are different widths and colors attributing an illusion of movement and energy 6. However, the starched permanence of the curtains is imposing and immediate, expressing Melee’s intended static neurotic energy. Furthermore, the static quality and thick enamel coating makes the curtains more of a permanent barrier than a removable cover, sealing Melee’s domestic life from the outside, as if to suggest that it is no longer possible for the contestant to merely choose a curtain and change his/her life.

Her Curtains, suggest that there are no more windows to be opened for Melee. Melee’s bottlecap paintings are another example of an appropriation of a household object, yet it is a departure from his figurative domestic references 4. “Alcoholism is a household object, for me at least,” explains Melee, and the technique shows a weird, suburban mentality 1. The plainly unsophisticated technique “feels like the kind of art [one would] imagine bored teenagers making when they run out of drugs.” 4 Bottle caps nailed to a wood panel, repeatedly coated in plaster and then covered in gloss paint, Melee’s technique is decidedly unpretentious and kitschy 7. High life (2005) [figure 3] expresses again that static neurotic energy. The gradients of color transition from the outer blue black inwards to the bright white. The inner light colors are very contained and focused though they attempt to scatter and leak out to the edges. The innermost white seeps out slightly but weakens as it does, the dark outer ring enclosing the lighter colors within, keeping the energy static and creating a nervous tension between the outside and inside.

The intense inner turmoil of High life shows the successful bottlecap painting depiction of a psychological state, but in the same manner that Melee wields his theatrical aesthetic to dismiss the gravity of his subjects, the gaping hole at the core of the inner white center similarly jabs at created tension in the piece. The central hole empties the painting of its climax, like Melee’s aesthetic that prevents both himself and the viewer from being able to fully access the emotional origin of the subject. Melee’s entertainment units are yet another example of Melee’s use of household objects. If taken further, the entertainment units could be interpreted as a metaphor for Melee’s theoretically. Emotionality aside, even the most painful memories can be made funny if presented in a certain way, and Melee says, “ this very tragic comedy is what most of my work is about.” 1

“Mommy- the ultimate household object,” as Melee puts it, is the reigning influence of his life 1. With dominion over his very psyche, Melee’s entire career of work, from the inescapable memories of home and family to his interest in psychological states, is an homage to his mother. The intense attention he pays her is both an act of revenge and absurd love. Melee explains that his grotesque portrayals of his mother in his films and photographs are “based on memories of Mommy being provocative, sexual and drunk … lots of makeup, miniskirts and her hair color always changing. It’s a characterization really pushed.” 1 Yet the characterization is decidedly unflattering and not only divulging this interpretation of her, but then asking her to act it out is a way of asserting himself over a past that so consumes him. This exploitation of his mother and violation of her privacy seems not to register with Melee, as the inappropriate sexual relation between them doesn’t.

Melee explains that “she doesn’t really get it, she’s kind of in her own world” and yet at the same time even in taking advantage of this he does not view the relationship to be exploitative, oddly commending her, saying “she’s a great model, she really just does anything.”1 This indifference and submission manifests on both sides. Rose concedes to her son without comprehending exactly why and for what, but she also doesn’t care to know and simply submits without question. Similarly, Melee, too, submits to his mother, not questioning her alcoholism, and instead makes her drink for his art and in his free time even drinks with her1. This mutual surrender can be seen as a “psychological comedy of terrors, an act of collaboration as mutual assault, which is … one definition of the dysfunctional family.”

Melee says that from very early on he and his mother were close; however, he explains, “her coming and going while growing up was very difficult and from my early teens until my twenties we didn’t speak and I had to leave the house. But in making the movies we became close again, she told me very personal things, why she treated us the way she did … we were bonding while drinking together.”1 However, Melee’s moral abandon towards his mother seems to be deeply rooted. He claims “my brothers don’t question [my portrayal of Rose Melee], it’s like, yeah, that’s Mommy. They get it.”1 And just as his art never really portrays what the reality of his home life was like, Melee offers no explanation further than this1. And in the face of blatant characterization and absurd story lines, Melee’s film of a clown mother mistreating her clown son in a playground seems to be the plainest, least exaggerated depiction of their relationship 9.

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Melee’s solo exhibition You, Me and Her in Andrew Kreps Gallery in 2002 best embodies the aggressive yet affectionate relationship between Melee and his mother, and the overwhelming way in which it has permeated every aspect of his existence. Melee’s tripartite show divides the space into: the Gallery, the Viewing Room, the Backroom and You, Me, Her respectively. The night of the exhibition’s opening reception featured Melee’s mother herself [figure 4], appearing as her character from the film Popcorn Mommy (1998) and the video recording of her live performance was replayed following opening night 10. There she sat, in nothing but fishnet tights and a feather boa with huge hair and heavy makeup, on a folding chair atop a raised glass box. She leered at the crowd, drinking beer, smoking and exposing herself- it seemed the most abject moral violation of Melee’s entire career; he even offered her up at a price of $6000 nightly rent 11. Once past the entrance, the show opened with the Gallery [figure 5], comprised of an entirely yellow and white color palette featuring the sculpture/painting Substitute Homage Substitution [figure 6], which references Josef Albers Homage to a Square (1970) [figure 7], 3 bottlecap paintings, a mobile, collage of photographs of Rose Melee drinking and Facelift Mommy Unit [figure 8]. The simple unit is unremarkable as an artistic object, but the haunting videos screened on the three monitors provides a good introduction for the sordid videos that await in the second room. The Viewing Room is lit with a red light, highlighting the stark contrast between “You” and “Me” 5. The Gallery provides a metaphor for the viewer’s experience of Melee’s world, with only three mild, albeit haunting, encounters with Mommy and the limited and safer painting and sculpture abstractions of the psychological consequences of the relationship. Whereas, the Viewing Room’s red lighting illustrates Mommy’s concentrated, harrowing presence for Melee, described further by the two longer and more pointed videos screened. The first video, You, Me and Her shows the extent of Mommy’s consuming presence in Melee’s life. Portraying a young man lying on a bed, the man startlingly transforms into Mommy herself as Melee’s hand reaches to him 11. Unlike in the Gallery, Melee’s mother informs and robs the artist’s every intimate relationship. Secondly, Popcorn Mommy (1998) is a chilling depiction of his mother’s presence in his psyche. Posing half naked, vamping herself for the camera she sits on the couch, meanwhile Melee runs behind her, strips to his underwear, touches himself then lays an open pot of popcorn on the floor, which proceeds top pop and hit her11. She screams in protest as Melee laughs hysterically and reminds her that she used to make popcorn for him as a child 11. Lastly, in the Backroom is the “Mommy show” as Melee describes it 1.. The Backroom features a futuristic, palette of greens and blues with a lighter wood paneling, showcasing Her Unit [figure 9]. The circular wall unit looks like an altar, featuring disturbing and romantic photographs and films of Melee’s mother. Mommy standing by the sea and sitting with her adult son in her lap, there is a very honest affection between mother and son, as a lifetime career devoted to Mommy would suggest. Melee sweetly describes the film of his mother running around in the snow naked to be “really very beautiful, Mommy in her essence.”1

Melee’s artistic work shows a marked progression in 2004, with his new minimal unit [figure 10], which is less of an environment and more of a sculpture, it seems that Melee is finally ready to move on. Here, his domestic life and the presence of his mother feel more self-contained and less expansive. Moreover, limited to a minimalist grayscale, perhaps Melee’s past no longer overwhelms him as it did towards the beginning of his artistic career. This seems to be so, as Melee’s most recent work, In Between False Comforts (2005) [figure 11] feels suddenly lonely without the ever-present mother figure in sight. The installation still features the same marbleization, bottlecap paintings and wood paneling technique, but presented in only grayscale and with no figurative images, the piece is a great departure for Melee. His amorphous forms, mannequins coated in canvas, plaster and enamel paint, are grotesque and haunting, without any direct figurative reference or narrative. It seems Melee’s theatrical, distancing aesthetic has hit its stride, no longer plagued by his past, Melee is now free to explore the objective human psyche outside the limitations of his mother and his personal narrative.