Bio­gra­phy

Pri­ma­rily through his multi-dimensional per­for­man­ces, instal­la­ti­ons, and kine­tic art­works that focus, for the most part, on sen­sory per­cep­tion and human inter­ac­tion, Robert Kess­ler (born 1956) has become known to a wider audi­ence in and around Munich.
In par­al­lel, he has crea­ted pho­to­gra­phy that docu­ments the run of several per­for­man­ces. Yet, these pho­to­graphs them­sel­ves hold a high level of artistic value in that they were alre­ady crea­ted as auto­no­mous works of art and also live up to this claim. The series “le temps d’illumination / Poul Prat” (2006) belongs to this group and was crea­ted at an aban­do­ned house in the far wes­tern end of Brit­tany. The series docu­ments artfully-illuminated buil­dings pho­to­gra­phed at night, the actual instal­la­ti­ons on view wit­hin these buil­dings, as well as the inte­rior and exte­rior of these struc­tures in day­light. A moving light in the dark regis­te­red by the camera as a tra­cer plays a cen­tral role from this point for­ward. In the series “light and water” (2007), this light is cha­rac­te­ri­zed as ner­vously vibra­ting struc­tures in the blue of the water. In “invi­si­ble stream” (2007), this light tou­ches the water’s sur­face. It con­trasts with the river’s cur­rent, which is barely dis­cer­ni­ble from the reflec­tion of the night sky, and scra­pes eit­her a dor­mant or ener­ge­tic line into the dar­k­ness. For “inside ice” (2008), on the other hand, Kess­ler allows the light to strike like light­ning into the icy archi­tec­ture of a gla­cier. Light sub­se­quently appears in a covert man­ner at the apex of a river’s dam in “water­lights fal­ling” (2008). “… ich bin Dein See”(“… I am Your Lake”) which was imple­men­ted at Lake Ammer in May 2009 by Robert Kess­ler con­sti­tu­tes his lar­gest light-based per­for­mance. Light from the sky (cast by a heli­c­op­ter) descen­ded onto the lake, where it was picked up by a boat that pas­sed it on to other boats, where it then for­med a cir­cle of rota­ting, ligh­ted fis­hing bob­bers. Here the incom­pa­ra­bly uni­que sce­nery, as obser­ved by fading day­light in con­junc­tion with the light instal­la­tion, immer­ses the viewer into the event’s visual imagery. Simi­larly, in the series “vision of sound” the coope­ra­tion of sound, light, and time is the pre­re­qui­site for the for­ma­tion of light-based images. A flexibly-constructed rod crea­ted by Kess­ler trans­la­tes sound and noise into move­ment; by swin­ging the light on the top of the rod through space, it regis­ters a three­di­men­sio­nal pat­tern in exact rela­tion to the sound emit­ted at that moment.
With all of this in con­side­ra­tion, Robert Kessler’s pho­to­graphs fall wit­hin the broad range of expe­ri­men­tal pho­to­gra­phy. Yet, the expe­ri­ment is not an aes­the­tic end in and of its­elf. Based upon the artist’s under­stan­ding, light is the reflec­tion of the human soul and a sym­bol of memory that is natu­rally embed­ded in the con­text of water, a vital ele­ment of life.

Cur­ri­cu­lum Vitae

Port­fo­lio