Jon Kessler
Jon Kessler received a B.F.A. from SUNY at Purchase and the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program. He has exhibited his work widely in Europe, Japan, and the United States. He has sculptures in the permanent collections of many institutions, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Walker Art Center, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. He has received several NEA grants, the St. Gaudens Memorial Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Foundation for the Performing Arts grant.
For his solo exhibition "Global Village Idiot" at Deitch Projects in 2004, he began a new series of video sculptures, which led to his first New York museum exhibition, "The Palace at 4 A.M." at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in 2005. The show traveled to the Phoenix Kulturstiftung/Sammlung Falckenberg in Hamburg, the House of World Cultures in Berlin and the Louisiana Museum in Denmark. In 2008 he showed his drawings and collages at The Drawing Center in New York. In 2009 Kessler exhibited his video installation, "Kessler's Circus" at Deitch Projects. There are three major publications on his work, Jon Kessler's Asia, Jon Kessler, and The Palace at 4 A.M. He plays guitar and harmonica with the art rock band The X-Patsys.
The MoMA PS1 show Theater of Operations: The Gulf Wars 1991–2011 features works by artists who respond to the legacies of American military involvement in Iraq, beginning with the Gulf War in 1991.
Battleship Potemkin, an exhibit curated by alumnus Rafael Domenech '19, runs June 28 – August 24, 2019 at the Fredric Snitzer Gallery in Miami, Florida.
Visual Arts professor Jon Kessler was recently in an exhibition with multiple installations in Shanghai at Chronus Art Center as well as in Guangzhou at the Guangdong Museum of Art.
Visual Arts Professor of Professional Practice and Concentration Head of Expanded Practice/Sculpture Jon Kessler showcases his newest exhibition, The Fourth Bird, at Mildred's Lane Complex(ity) from June 28 to August 2, 2025.
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2009
Kessler’s Circus places the viewer inside the American war machine. An army tent pitched inside the gallery houses mechanical sculptures and barracks stacked with video monitors.
2009
For the last few years, an exhibition of the work of Jon Kessler has entailed a whirligig installation of cutout and ephemera, with live-feed cameras and monitors that scoped out visitors in a paranoid maze. His current exhibition at Pace Prints focuses on works on paper, a medium which he has only used since 2007.
2007
The Drawing Center is pleased to present the first exhibition devoted to the drawing-based work of renowned mixed-media sculptor Jon Kessler in the Drawing Room from September 14 through October 25.