Combining Conceptual Art, Land Art and Social Practice, Mark Brest van Kempen’s varied sculptures and performances often use the landscape itself as sculptural material. From the Free Speech Monument on the University of California, Berkeley campus to Land Exchange at the National Academy of Art in China, his work explores the range of emotions and issues that are embodied in our complex relationship to the environment, land, and place.
Brest van Kempen has received numerous commissions for permanent public art projects, including from the San Francisco Arts Commission, University of California, the City of Palo Alto, the City of Seattle, and the Haas Foundation, and was invited by the German government to submit designs for a national reunification monument in Leipzig, Germany. His work has been presented in several books, including Lucy Lippard’s The Lure of the Local and Peter Selz’s Art of Engagement, as well as publications including Time Magazine, The New York Times, Art in America, and the Los Angeles Times.
His video/performance project Living from Land, in which he lived entirely from the land in a wilderness area for one month, was featured at Exit Art in New York City, NY; The Armory Center for the Arts in Pasadena, CA; and The Richmond Art Center in Richmond, CA. He was an artist in residence at the Dalsland Museum in Sweden and the Headlands Center for the Arts in Sausalito, CA. He has received a California Arts Council Fellowship and has taught at the San Francisco Art Institute, California College of the Arts, and Stanford University. He received a BFA from the University of Utah and an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute.
Residency: February 2026 - May 2026
Art Exhibition: Friday, May 15 & Saturday, May 16 & Tuesday, May 19