Michael Kessler

Michael Kessler was born in Hanover, Pennsylvania in 1954. He received a BFA from Kutztown University. Kessler makes nature-based paintings that merge geometric elements with biomorphism. While still an undergraduate at Kutztown University, Kessler received a fellowship from the Whitney Museum of American Art to study and produce art in New York City at the Whitney Independent Study Program (1977-78). Influenced by the paintings of Brice Marden and Elizabeth Murray as well as the music of Phillip Glass and Steve Reich, 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. In 1991 after returning from a year in Italy (via the Rome Prize) Kessler became very involved with large-scale, site-specific installations. Since 1983 his paintings have been shown in over two hundred exhibitions throughout the United States and Europe.