Mike Kelley’s oeuvre is punctuated by a critical investigation of the darker side of youth and the process of “growing up.” His career long examination of adolescent repression and the psychoanalytic reconsideration of childhood memories has produced a body of work that is both enlightening and deeply troubling. Interested in the communication of fractured and fabricated narratives, much of Kelley’s assumed biography and childhood trauma is in fact invented by the artist and assumes a sort of universality for the very history upon which he is commenting – the Middle American suburban ideal.

Prenatal Mutual Recognition of Betty and Barney Hill, 1995 is from a series entitled Timeless Paintings which were originally exhibited in the artist’s seminal show at Metro Pictures in New York, 1995. Comprised of these paintings exhibited around architectural models of every school the artist attended, the show was an exercise in psychoanalytic determination. The present work depicts two young children, mouths agape in a sexually suggestive fashion, on an irregularly shaped canvas. Aside from their two faces, the composition is largely abstract with two large Hoffmann-esque blocks of color obscuring whatever other narrative component may be included beneath. An allusion to the sort of painting he was taught in art school, the panels serve to illustrate the artist’s belief that abstract art itself is repressive in the sense that it distorts and obscures narrative structure. Intriguing and mesmerizing, Prenatal Mutual Recognition of Betty and Barney Hill is rife with analytical allusion and playful artistry.

Adult reinterpretations of childhood and childhood memories have become an important subject for many of this generation's most influential contemporary artists. Ranging from Jeff Koons's playful Popples, 1988, to Urs Fischer's monumental sculpture Untitled (Lamp/Bear), 2005-2006, artists have appropriated images taken from childhood as a way of drawing the viewer into the work. Kelley’s fixation on the subject has made works like Prenatal Mutual Recognition of Betty and Barney Hill among the most polarizing and lauded objects to tackle this delicate subject matter.