BIO
Professor, 1998
B.F.A. 1974, Ohio University
M.F.A. 1980, University of California, Irvine
Kim Abeles is an artist who crosses disciplines and media to explore and map the urban environment and chronicle broad social issues. Her work, described as "dazzling in its diversity of appearance and direction, and grounded in intellectual detail," (Joe Lewis, Art in America) ranges in scale from personal artifacts to large-scale public projects. The Smog Collector series brought her work to national and international attention in the art world and was covered by Newsweek and Dan Rather. Her urban sculpture and performance are chronicled in the anthology, Surface Tension-Problematics of Site (Herlich and LaBelle).
Her acclaimed mid-career survey, Encyclopedia Persona A-Z, toured throughout the United States and South America. Its award winning, encyclopedic-style catalogue was published in English, Spanish, and Portuguese editions. Abeles has exhibited extensively in North and South America as well as Europe and Asia. She has represented the U.S. in both the Fotografie Biennale Rotterdam and the Cultural Centre of Berchem in Antwerp.
Her work is in the collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art, the United States Information Agency, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and is archived in the library collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Cooper-Hewitt Publication Design Collection of the Smithsonian.
Articles and reviews about her work have been widely published, including in Art in America, Artforum, and Art Press. Abeles was awarded grants from the Andy Warhol Foundation and the Peter Norton Foundation and fellowships from the J. Paul Getty Trust Fund for the Visual Arts, the Pollack-Krasner Foundation, the California Arts Council, and the Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department. She is currently developing a site-specific installation for The Publicís new building in The West Midlands, England.