Michael Kessler (artist) - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Michael Kessler is an American artist

Artist

An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...

. He currently lives and works in Santa Fe

Santa Fe, New Mexico

Santa Fe is the capital of the U.S. state of New Mexico. It is the fourth-largest city in the state and is the seat of . Santa Fe had a population of 67,947 in the 2010 census...

, New Mexico

New Mexico

New Mexico is a state located in the southwest and western regions of the United States. New Mexico is also usually considered one of the Mountain States. With a population density of 16 per square mile, New Mexico is the sixth-most sparsely inhabited U.S...

Art

Kessler makes nature-based paintings that merge geometric elements with biomorphism

Biomorphism

Biomorphism is an art movement that began in the 20th century. It patterns artistic design elements on naturally occurring patterns or shapes reminiscent of nature. Taken to its extreme it attempts to force naturally occurring shapes onto functional devices, often with mixed results.-History:The...

. He began his art career as a landscape

Landscape art

Landscape art is a term that covers the depiction of natural scenery such as mountains, valleys, trees, rivers, and forests, and especially art where the main subject is a wide view, with its elements arranged into a coherent composition. In other works landscape backgrounds for figures can still...

painter. While still an undergraduate at Kutztown University

Kutztown University of Pennsylvania

Kutztown University of Pennsylvania , is an American public university located in rural Kutztown, Berks County, Pennsylvania and is one of fourteen schools that comprise the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education and is accredited by the Middle States Association of Colleges and Secondary...

Kessler received a fellowship

Fellowship

Fellowship may refer to:* An academic position: see fellow* A merit-based scholarship, or form of academic financial aid* Fellowship , a period of medical training after a residency...

from the Whitney Museum of American Art

Whitney Museum of American Art

The Whitney Museum of American Art, often referred to simply as "the Whitney", is an art museum with a focus on 20th- and 21st-century American art. Located at 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street in New York City, the Whitney's permanent collection contains more than 18,000 works in a wide variety of...

to study and produce art in New York City at the Whitney Independent Study Program. During this period (1977-78) he met many important artist working in New York City including Richard Tuttle

Richard Tuttle

Richard Dean Tuttle is an American postminimalist artist known for his small, subtle, intimate works. His art makes use of scale and line.- Biography :...

and Dorothea Rockburne

Dorothea Rockburne

Dorothea Rockburne is an abstract painter drawing inspiration primarily from her deep interest in mathematics and astronomy. In 1950 she moved to the United States to attend Black Mountain College, where she studied with mathematician Max Dehn, a lifelong influence on her work...

. Influenced by the paintings of Brice Marden

Brice Marden

Brice Marden , is an American artist, generally described as Minimalist, although his work defies specific categorization. He lives in New York and Eagles Mere.Marden is represented by the Matthew Marks Gallery.-Life:...

and Elizabeth Murray

Elizabeth Murray (artist)

Elizabeth Murray was an American painter, printmaker and draughtsman. Her works are in many major public collections, including those of the Solomon R...

as well as the music of Phillip Glass and Steve Reich

Steve Reich

Stephen Michael "Steve" Reich is an American composer who together with La Monte Young, Terry Riley, and Philip Glass is a pioneering composer of minimal music...

he began experimenting with his own work. His paintings soon became fully non-objective. Kessler's works are characterized by large fields of diaphanous color that are activated by organic linear structures that have been visually and physically woven into a grid structure which consists of thick slabs of paint. These organic linear structures are overlapped and punctuated by dentritic

Dendrite

Dendrites are the branched projections of a neuron that act to conduct the electrochemical stimulation received from other neural cells to the cell body, or soma, of the neuron from which the dendrites project...

growth patterns that suggest the bending of time and space. All of these visual elements as well as the color combinations have been carefully extracted from nature

Nature

Nature, in the broadest sense, is equivalent to the natural world, physical world, or material world. "Nature" refers to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general...

over time through prolonged observation and then reconstructed and orchestrated to transmit the dynamics of the Natural World. In this way Kessler synthesizes disparate elements into a new kind of harmony.

In 1991 after returning from a year in Italy (via. the Rome Prize

American Academy in Rome

The American Academy in Rome is a research and arts institution located on the Gianicolo in Rome.- History :In 1893, a group of American architects, painters and sculptors met regularly while planning the fine arts section of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition...

) Kessler became very involved with large-scale, site-specific

Site-specific art

Site-specific art is artwork created to exist in a certain place. Typically, the artist takes the location into account while planning and creating the artwork...

installations. Gallery owner Chris Schmidt (Schmidt/Dean Gallery, Philadelphia) worked with Kessler to initiate this project by obtaining a commission

Commission (art)

In art, a commission is the hiring and payment for the creation of a piece, often on behalf of another.In classical music, ensembles often commission pieces from composers, where the ensemble secures the composer's payment from private or public organizations or donors.- Commissions for public art...

from Arlen Specter

Arlen Specter

Arlen Specter is a former United States Senator from Pennsylvania. Specter is a Democrat, but was a Republican from 1965 until switching to the Democratic Party in 2009...

for Kessler's first site-specific work which was installed in Senator Specter's office at the Hart Senate Office Building

Hart Senate Office Building

The Hart Senate Office Building, the third U.S. Senate office building, was built in the 1970s. First occupied in November 1982, the Hart Building is the largest of the Senate office buildings. It is named for Philip A. Hart, who served 18 years as a senator from Michigan.-Design and...

in Washington, D.C. In Chicago Kessler continued this pursuit with Gallery owner Paul Klein

Paul Klein (art activist)

Paul Klein is an American art dealer. He was chosen 2006 Man of the Year by the Chicago Society of Artists.Klein works for the Briddge Group providing financial and legacy planning for collectors. He was the first executive director of the Chicago ART Project...

who also got involved with the placement of site-specific works in his gallery Klein Art Works.

Education

Bachelors of Fine Arts degree from Kutztown University.

Kessler attended the Independent Study Program at the Whitney Museum of American Art

Whitney Museum of American Art

Awards

Winner of the Rome Prize, 1991

Winner of the Pollock-Krasner Award, 1992

Winner of the "Awards in the Visual Arts-5" grant in painting, 1985

Winner of the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grant in painting, 1983

Pennsylvania Council on the Arts

The Pennsylvania Council on the Arts is an agency serving the U.S. state of Pennsylvania.Established in 1966, its mission is "to foster the excellence, diversity and vitality of the arts in Pennsylvania and to broaden the availability and appreciation of those arts throughout the state." Each year...

Public Collections

His paintings are held in twenty five museum collections including:

The Brooklyn Museum

The Albright-Knox Art Gallery

The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston

The Broad Art Foundation in Los Angeles

The New Museum in New York City

Gallery Exhibitions

Since 1983 his paintings have been shown in over two hundred exhibitions throughout the United States and Europe.

Five solo shows at the Jack Tilton Gallery in New York City.

Solo Exhibition at the Ann Korologos Gallery in Basalt, Colorado

Basalt, Colorado

Basalt is a Statutory Town in Eagle and Pitkin counties in the U.S. state of Colorado. The population was 2,681 at the 2000 census.-Geography:...

(Gallery is owned by former Secretary of Labor, Ann Korologos).

Gallery Bienvenu, New Orleans, Louisiana

Madison Gallery, LaJolla, California

Paia Contemporary Gallery, Maui, Hawaii

SchmidtDean Gallery, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Lanoue Fine Art, Boston, Massachusetts

Sense Fine Art, Menlo Park, California

Critical Reviews

Kessler's paintings have been featured in numerous art publications

Art in America

Art in America

Art in America is an illustrated monthly, international magazine concentrating on the contemporary art world, including profiles of artists and genres, updates about art movements, show reviews and event schedules. It is designed for collectors, artists, dealers, art professionals and other...

Artforum

Artforum is an international monthly magazine specializing in contemporary art.-Publication:The magazine is published ten times a year, September through May, along with an annual summer issue...

ArtNews

ARTnews

ARTnews is an arts magazine based in New York, founded by James Clarence Hyde in 1902 as Hyde’s Weekly Art News. It is published 11 times a year.ARTnews covers all art, from ancient to Post-modernism...

Art Ltd.

External links

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