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Rachel Kessler

CV​

 

Education

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2007-2010 Art Center College of Design

2000-2004 California Institute of the Arts​

 

Selected Solo Exhibitions​

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  • Salon de Autumn North Coast Seed Studios Portland Oregon 2022

  • Summer Arrangement Stoller Family Estate Newberg Oregon 2019

  • LumaPeal at Wharton/Espinosa, Pacific Design Center,Los Angeles, CA 2011

  • A Slip From Now Into Possible Futures at Annie Wharton Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 2009

  • Suspension Concrete Main Gallery, Pasadena, CA 2008

  • Slow Burn Raymond Ave. Gallery, S. Pasadena, CA

  • The Passenger RAC Design Building, Los Angeles, CA 2006

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Selected Group Exhibitions​

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  • Incomprehensible Cloud Deity, Common Gallery, Louisville Kentucky

  • Los Angeles at International Contemporary Art Fair, Santa Monica, CA, represented by Wharton Espinosa

  • Once Emerging, Now Emerging; Livin’LA  Pacific Standard Time, Cirrus Gallery,

  • The Golden Ass Annie Wharton Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA

  • World from Pocket  performance, Human Resources Gallery at International Contemporary Art  Fair, Santa Monica, CA

  • Phantom Locomotion PrintRoom's The Flip Collection International Festival Rotterdam (IFFR)

  • Paper that Cried Wolf Consciousness Reframed Conference “Making Reality Really, Really Real” Trondheim, Norway

  • Team Zatara An Evening Concert Of Live Motion Portraiture (Assembled in 7 Kinesthetic Phrases) Francois Ghelby Gallery, Los Angeles

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Selected Group Exhibitions​

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  • “The Spirit of Rebellion and How It Loves Everything: An Essay on the Visual Art of Patti Smith”

  •  Profils Américains edited by Claude Chastagner and published by Université Paul Valéry, Montpellier III , Route de Mend 34199 Montpellier Cedex 5 France, December 2015

  •  “Making Reality Really, Really Real” 11th annual Consciousness Reframed conference catalogue,

  • essay “The Text that Reads Wolf,” conference and book created and edited by Espen Gangvik, Roy Ascott, and Marguerite Jahrnman (November 2010): 108.

  • New.Brave.World! Catalogue for 2010 Meta.Morf Biennial for Art and Technology, edited by Espen Gangvik and published by TEKS January 2010, Trondheim Norway

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Selected Group Exhibitions​

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  • Team Zatara reviewed in Global Graphica Online Journal, Feb. 1st, 2011

  • Beyond the White Cube: Rachel Kessler. Painter. Interview for the online art blog by curator Yasmine Mohensi,

  • Interview Posted on August 9, 2011 http://yasminemohseni.com/rachel-kessler-painter/

Rachel Kessler Incomprehensible Cloud Deity

Common Gallery May-June 2023 

 

This body of work draws inspiration from representation of time in painting. Images of muses depicting time as circular dance or images of the earth itself as a mother in mourning are layers of human storytelling and debris integrated within the strata of traditional landscape. These layers emerge from and live within an atmosphere that both binds and transforms them as part of the living world. These incomprehensible spaces, like clouds, come in and out of clarity as they shift focus.The volcanic landscapes in the paintings, such as Yellowstone, are characterized by a shifting quality. They are made up of powerfully fractured surfaces that reveal how the landscapes themselves came into being. The paintings, developed over the course of the pandemic, use ephemeral elements like scraps of paper to emphasize the deeply mutual relationship between an internal and external world.Personal Graffiti Grand Prismatic and Demeter in Mourning feature pools of heated water from below the earth’s surface that bare the color of their continued evolution in dramatic bacterial growth. The constructions of culture and nature here are proposed as a dynamic relationship. Language Nest and Mixer are composed as collections of fragments that create new forms. Similar to tectonic surfaces, broken pieces become a new whole that creates potential for new spaces of habitation and experience.  

 

Bio: Rachel Kessler is a painter and educator currently living in Portland, Oregon. Her work has been featured in Pacific Standard Time, The Los Angeles International Art Fair, and has been represented by galleries such as Human Resources Los Angeles, and Wharton Espinosa. She has also contributed to the development of youth and adult resources for creative arts education nationally as a partner to none profits, museums, science centers, and other informal spaces dedicated to personal and community engagement in the arts.

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