Martin Kersels

Martin Kersels, Professor in Sculpture

Martin Kersels was born in Los Angeles, California. After he graduated with an undergraduate degree in art from UCLA in 1984, he became a founding member of the collaborative performance group SHRIMPS. This group worked together on movement-based performances until 1993. Back at UCLA for his MFA from 1992 to 1995, he began to create sculptures – both intimate and large, still and full of movement. He also made photographs that documented performative moments and videos that presented his body as an object.

His interest in machines, entropy, sound, and dissolution has produced work that examines the dynamic tension between failure and success, the individual and the group, and the thin line between humor and misfortune. Since 1995, Kersels’ objects and projects have been exhibited at museums both nationally and internationally, including the 1997 and 2010 Whitney Biennials, the Pompidou Center, MOCA Los Angeles, the Pompidou Brussels, the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Tinguely Museum, Kunsthalle Bern, MAMCO in Geneva, the Yale University Art Gallery, and the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. He is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Joan Mitchell Foundation, and the Foundation for Contemporary Art. Before joining the faculty at Yale he was a faculty member and co-director of the art program at the California Institute of the Arts. Mr. Kersels was appointed associate professor and director of graduate studies in sculpture in 2012.