Jon Kessler returned to Purchase in 1978 and graduated in 1980 with honors.
14 Facts About Jon Kessler
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Jon Kessler was one of the founders of the Bozart toy company and is currently a professor at Columbia University.
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Jon Kessler plays guitar for the X-Patsys, a band he started with artist Robert Longo and actress Barbara Sukowa.
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Jon Kessler is best known for his kinetic sculptures that leave the mechanics exposed for the viewer.
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Jon Kessler often presented Asia as a construct of Western Orientalism, while at the same time portraying the West in a steady state of decline.
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Jon Kessler blended these visions with equal parts humor and tragedy in pieces such as The Last Birdrunner, a kinetic sculpture based on the science fiction movie Blade Runner.
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Jon Kessler's aesthetic has shifted as well: in contrast with the meditative, self-contained sculptures he made previously, his works in Palace at 4 AM are raw, sprawling, duct-taped, and crisscrossed with electrical cables.
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In 2011, Jon Kessler collaborated with artist Mika Rottenberg on SEVEN, a performance and installation created for Performa 11 in New York City, performed at Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery.
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Jon Kessler has recently expanded his practice of drawing and is currently working on a project with Dieu Donne, a papermaking studio in Manhattan, New York.
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Jon Kessler was the thesis advisor for Emma Sulkowicz's Mattress Performance art project.
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Jon Kessler was included in the International Survey of Recent Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1983, and took part in the 1985 Whitney Biennial.
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In 2019, Jon Kessler will show work in Strange Loops at Artspace, curated by Federico Solmi and Johannes DeYoung.
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Jon Kessler's work is in many permanent collections, including those of the MoMA, the Whitney Museum, MOCA, Walker Art Center, and the Israel Museum.
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Jon Kessler received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in 1983 and again in 1985, the St Gaudens Memorial award in 1995, a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1996, a grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award in 2000, a Foundation for the Performing Arts Fellowship in 2001, and a Creative Capital Award in 2015.