| 3.01 ARTIST STATEMENT | 3.02 BIOGRAPHY | 3.03 CURRICULUM VITAE |
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Long time artist/activist/curator Richard Kamler has
been making issue-driven art since 1976 when he made his first major
installation, "Out of Holocaust," a full size reconstructed section
of one of the barracks from the Auschwitz Death Camp. Since that time
his public installations, sound pieces, actions, events, drawings
and public presentations have dealt with a series of social issues
and environmental considerations. Kamler's installations, drawings, sound pieces, actions and events, environments have been exhibited in a wide range of venues; among them Alcatraz Island, at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the East Jerusalem Cultural Center, Bischoff Gallery in Cologne, Germany, McMullen Museum in Boston, the San Francisco Art Institute, on the grounds of the San Francisco County Jail, "The Sound of Lions Roaring," a sound event in San Francisco Bay, Long Beach Museum of Art, Sam Houston Memorial Museum in Huntsville, Texas, Raw Space Gallery in Chicago, Art Space in New York, at the Experimental Video Festival in the Netherlands etc. In the early 90's Kamler began to include a "dialogue" component in his work. It was based around the idea of "social sculpture," from Joseph Beuys', the German conceptualist, and that have the intention of reaching out to a wider public and to effect greater social, cultural, educational and environmental changes. From 1979-1981, Kamler in collaboration with Elin Elisofon, and under a Project Grant from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, spent two years creating the "Desert Project," an earth structure and installation in Southwest New Mexico. The drawings, photographs and objects were exhibited at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Through the 80's and into the 90's, Kamler created a series of installation, drawings, and sound pieces that looked at issues of personal freedom and institutional responses to them. This work investigated the various aspects of the criminal justice system; the economics, the social, and the cultural aspects of penal populations, and the class structures that support these institutions. These mixed media installations were shown in a range of art and non-art venues throughout Europe and the USA. Kamler has received many awards and grants for his work; among them are a National Endowment for the Arts Visual Arts Fellowship in New Genres category, an Alaskan State Arts Council/NEA grant when he spent 9 months in residence at Petersburg on Baranof Island in Alaska doing "landscape installations." He has received several California Arts Council Artist in Residence awards, Gunk Foundation for Public Art, Institute of Noetic Science, and Potrero Nuevo Fund In 1981 Kamler spent two years as Artist in Residence in San Quentin Prison. This experience dramatically changed the focus of his art as well as his thinking about the way art might be integrated into the fabric of our culture. He began to think of art as a transformative agent, one for social change and cultural transformation. In 1990 he received a grant from the Adolph Gottlieb Foundation. In 1996 Kamler was awarded the Adaline Kent Award from the San Francisco Art Institute. In 1997 Kamler was awarded a California Arts Council Fellowship and in 1999 a major Artist Fellowship from George Soros’ Open Society Institute. Kamler is currently the Chair of the Visual Arts Department of the University of San Francisco where he is also responsible for the art outreach program that places artists into various communities, "Artist as Citizen in Contemporary Society." He has been in Residence at Blue Mountain Center for the Arts in New York, Ucross Foundation in Wyoming, and Millay Colony for the Arts in New York. Kamler is an active member of the arts community, serving on many panels/juries, curating exhibits and speaking publicly and with great enthusiasm on the ideas surrounding socially engaged art. Kamler has a B.Arch.'63 in Architecture and an M.Arch. '74 in Architecture from the University of California, Berkeley. He was an apprentice from 1963-1965 to Frederick Kiesler, the visionary painter, sculptor, architect. |
