Wesley Kimler
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Wesley Kimler (1953) an American artist based in Chicago, Illinois, is known for his colossal paintings, up to 15 feet high and 27 feet wide. According to critic Kevin Nance, these are " expressive, gestural, hybrid paintings that combine abstract and figurative elements in a way that's theatrical and beautiful, sometimes grotesque and surreal, and always powerfully evocative."
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[edit] History
Kimler was born in Billings, Montana. His family moved to California in 1959, where Kimler lived until he left home at the age of 14. Thereafter, he lived in San Francisco, Taos, New Mexico (where he studied music), Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, and Afghanistan. In that country, the then 20-year old Kimler lived in Herat, Kandahar and Kabul, working as an agent for a dealer in traditional carpets.
Kimler first began to paint at the age of 21, studying one year at the Laguna Gloria School of Art in Austin, Texas and 2 years at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design.
The artist had his first widespread attention with a series of shows in the mid 1980s at Frumkin-Struve (later simply Struve) Gallery in Chicago.
[edit] Artistic Views
He has been quite a controversial figure since then, known for giving very outspoken interviews in which he champions painting, attacks the Neo-Conceptual academy and the artworld hierarchy, advocating independence and self-reliance on the part of creators. He is also renowned in the contemporary Chicago artworld for his work rallying for a new art scene. Nicknamed "the Shark" due to his fierceness in discussions, he organized a website, e-zine and artist group titled Sharkforum with fellow artist David Roth, which includes such well-known figures as Museum of Contemporary Art curator Lynne Warren, photographer and film critic Ray Pride and artist and theorist Mark Staff Brandl.
[edit] Exhibitions
In addition to the Struve Gallery exhibitions in 1985 , 86, 87 and 90, other notable shows by Kimler include those at Barbara Kornblatt Gallery in Washington, DC in 1986, LA Louver Gallery in Los Angeles in 1987 and 1990, Paula Anglim in San Francisco in 1990, "The Real Deal" with artists Ed Paschke and Tony Fitzpatrick in 1994, a Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago solo exhibition in 1995, as well as inclusion in the important "Art in Chicago, 1945-1995" exhibition at the latter institution in 1996, as well as many others.
Kimler's art has been acquired by many institutions including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Berkeley Art Museum in Berkeley, California, the Norton Museum in Miami, Florida, the Weisman Art Museum in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and in Chicago's Block Museum, Smart Museum, Aon Tower and Museum of Contemporary Art, as well as in numerous private collections.
[edit] Controversy
As mentioned above, Kimler's art and his openly critical stance frequently attract counter-attacks, especially from the Neo-Conceptual academy, whose vested interest he violently assails. One minor Chicago reviewer wrote in the fall of 1998 his opinion of Kimler's artworld position, while discussing another far less important artist.
Quoted from Michael Bulka on the work of Mitchell Kane & Wesley Kimler. "Mitchell Kane and Wesley Kimler --actually have a lot in common. They both manage to live comfortable lives in the anachronistic art worlds in their own heads, while maintaining an attitude of superiority to the art world in which they are a peripheral presence. " [1]
Oppositely, Lisa Wainwright, a professor of art history and dean of graduate studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, has said of Kimler's art: "It's heroic, moral painting. He lives and breathes his art in the way the great painters did." [2] Likewise, Lynne Warren of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago and artist and theorist Mark Staff Brandl both find Kimler to be among the most important American painters
[edit] Recent Work
Kimler's most recent paintings include vivid, deep-hued fields of color containing black biomorphic areas formed of sensuous, flowing paint. Passages of recognizable imagery appear to swirl forth from these enormous splotches, most frequently heads, faces, hands, and legs. Many of the faces suggest contemporary citations of past masters such as Velasquez, Manet or Titian.
