CLOSING RECEPTION Jon Kessler at The Mildred Complex(ity)

Utilizing many familiar tropes of the 20th century artist: the assemblage, the found object, the political affect–Kessler has opted for a series of surprisingly intimate and considered constructions. Expanding on his recent explorations in bronze and ceramics, these works conjure post-pastoral landscapes, where beauty and ecological collapse intertwine. Incorporating materials as varied as scavenged metal, glazed clay, and German porcelain figurines, these relics of the future balance elegance and entropy, offering a poignant commentary on reclamation and regeneration.

Kessler’s works are in the permanent collections of many institutions including The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; The Brooklyn Museum, New York, NY; The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; The Broad, Los Angeles, CA; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA; The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT; Phoenix Art Museum, AZ; Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, ON; Chase Manhattan Art Collection, New York, NY; Ella Fontanals-Cisneros Collection, Miami, FL; the Tinguely Museum, Basel, CH; the Burger Collection, Hong Kong, CN; Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, NL; and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY.

He is the recipient of several National Endowment for the Arts awards, a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation award, a Foundation for the Performing Arts award, a St. Gaudens Memorial award, and a Creative Capital Grant. He is a Professor of Art at Columbia University where he has taught since 1994 and has lived and worked continuously in a former paint factory in Williamsburg, Brooklyn since 1980. His family has had a house in Tyler Hill, PA since 1901.