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Michael Kessler is a mixed media artist who lives on the Colorado Plateau in both Santa Fe, NM and Utah. Born in Hanover, Pennsylvania, Kessler received a B.F.A. from Kutztown University in Pennsylvania in 1978. Through the prolonged process of observation, it was the inner-dynamics of the natural world that grasped the artist’s attention. The questions of how and why nature looked the way it did began to drive his work.
"Nature provides the basis upon which my work exists,” shares Michael Kessler. “Gradually my painting process took on the characteristics of these natural processes [like sedimentation and erosion]. I invented the process and that process created the images that became my paintings. The main thing I want my work to convey is a sense of awe and wonder at the vast universe we can never comprehend. That is how I feel about the world we inhabit and those are the feelings I want my work to express."
Michael Kessler’s work explores the continuum between gesture and geometry. Compositions draw attention to elements that change and remain the same within a matrix of repetition. Large-scale panels are often divided compositionally with bands which allow him to place elements into and under the layers of the paint to draw attention to time-sequences and continuums leading the eye/mind through the process. Each work consists of as many as 50 micro-thin layers of translucent and transparent acrylic and paper. The process involves the application of many layers of marks and skins. A sandwich of information is built up to reveal the passage of time and its own creation. Biomorphic tendrils branch to and fro, while arcs of line and color slip over and under matrices, balancing nature’s sinuous curves with the mindfulness of structure. Like the yin and yang, the organic and geometric elements in his paintings speak not of dichotomy, but of integration.
The paintings function much the way music does, but with color and textures Kessler is able to stimulate associations as well as create visual experiences that awaken memories of nature. Nature is his model and transformation is his subject – his process an organic evolution. His work is influenced by collage artists such as Robert Raushenburg, Kurt Schwitters, Anselm Kiefer, and Mark Bradford.
Kessler's work has been widely exhibited in the US and abroad, and has been featured in over 70 solo exhibitions since 1983. His paintings are widely collected and appear in over 25 museum collections in the US, including the Brooklyn Museum in New York, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Awards of the work of Michael Kessler include the Rome Prize for Painting from the American Academy in Rome in 1990, and a Pollock/Krasner Award in Painting in 1992.
“The Ann Korologos Gallery gives nuance to the idea of ‘Western art’, tapping into the American West and frontier culture as an inspiration for their collections. Focused on American artists working across various media from painting and photography to sculpture and print-making, Ann Korologos Gallery is an unmissable, distinctively Coloradan bulwark of the Rocky Mountains’ arts scene. Located outside of Aspen in the small town of Basalt, numerous artists featured at the gallery channel the town’s idyllic surroundings into their artistic vision, with particular reference to the town’s reputation as a mountain fishing Mecca.”
