MICHAEL KESSLER r e c e p t i o n d e c e m b e r 1 st 6 – 9 p m
Calvin Cycles With conceptual sophistication and technical ĂŠlan, celebrated painter Michael Kessler illuminates the ongoing dialogue between natural forces and the human need for order and meaning. His uncanny synthesis of action painting with hard-edged abstraction addresses the interplay of freedom and containment, organicism and infrastructure. Kesslerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s imagery evokes fossils, cells, lichen, and the branching veins of ferns and trees, contextualizing these elements within immaculate architectonic geometries. A duet between the vegetal and the digital, the painterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s body of work poses a bracingly contemporary question: Is humankind rising above the vines, tides, and shifting sands of nature or being swallowed up in them? These meditations throb, glow, and sear into the eye through Kesslerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s highly personal sense of color: cool sage and mint greens, cozy redwood and desert beige, the zip of electric blue and the primal richness of red against black. A winner of the Prix de Rome and the Pollock/Krasner Award, Kessler has seen his work exhibited in museums and galleries throughout the United States and internationally in locales as IDU Ă XQJ DV 1HZ <RUN &LW\ &KLFDJR 3KLODGHOSKLD 5RPH ,WDO\ *|WHERUJ 6ZHGHQ DQG &XHQFD (FXDGRU +H OLYHV DQG ZRUNV LQ 6DQWD )H 1HZ 0H[LFR ZKHUH KLV VWXGLR WHHPV ZLWK WKH WURZHOV and palette knives, gessos and varnishes that he uses to layer jaunty spurts and arcs atop serene rectilinear forms. To peer down into these layers is to peer through clear Mediterranean waters, or to gaze with X-ray vision through an archaeological dig of human civilization. As they have for millennia, chaos and technology struggle for prominence in an almost Manichean fashion-but in .HVVOHU¡V YLVLRQ WKHVH SRODU IRUFHV Ă&#x20AC;QG D NLQG RI G\QDPLF HTXLSRLVH WKURXJK WKH SRZHU RI YLVXDO DQG metaphysical harmony.
Richard Speer
exhibition dates december 1st - december 31st, 2007 Front Cover: Constate, acrylic on panel, 60â&#x20AC;? x 80â&#x20AC;?, 2007
Feria, acrylic on panel, 39” x 54”, 2007
Octavo, acrylic on panel, 17 3/4” x 39 1/2”, 2007
Morro, acrylic on panel, 15” x 39”, 2007
Ilium, acrylic on panel, 39” x 47”, 2007
Idiolalia, acrylic on panel, 39” x 51”, 2007
-8/,$ 675((7 1(: 25/($16 /$
Havelock, 80â&#x20AC;? x 60â&#x20AC;?, acrylic on panel, 2007 ARTWORK Š MICHAEL KESSLER 2007 &$7$/2* Â&#x2039; *$//(5< %,(19(18
504.525.0518
www.gallerybienvenu.com