SUSANNE KESSLER

Susanne Kessler’s artistic practice encompasses an impressive range of media, including works on paper, photography, painting, sculpture and large-scale installation. Her work is characterised by expansive organic forms, complex structural systems and sustained reflections on human existence. Living and working between Berlin and Rome, Kessler is acutely aware of the historical cycles of growth and collapse that shape both cities and civilisations. This awareness informs her enduring fascination with time, memory and layered histories.

Central to Kessler’s practice is the investigation of line in all its manifestations. Across drawings, collages, paintings and spatial installations, line operates not only as a formal device but as a connective and transformative force that binds her diverse body of work. Her spatial drawings treat line as a site of memory and mobility, constructed through accumulative processes and multiple techniques developed over extended periods of time. These layered structures reveal different phases of her artistic evolution while remaining open, fluid and dynamic.

Kessler studied painting and graphic arts at the Berlin University of the Arts before completing further studies at the Royal College of Art, London. She has lived in Rome since 1984 and, for more than two decades, has also maintained a studio in Berlin. Her numerous international residencies—including Ethiopia, Guatemala, Mali, Pakistan, India and Iran—have had a lasting influence on her visual language and material sensibilities.

In 1992, Kessler was awarded the Paul Strecker Prize by the City of Mainz, and in 2022 she received the prestigious Von der Heydt Culture Prize. Alongside extensive residencies and scholarships, she has exhibited internationally in over sixty solo exhibitions. As an academic, she has held positions as a guest lecturer at California State University (CSU) and as Professor of Sculpture and Drawing at the City University of New York (CUNY).
Susanne Kessler first exhibited at October Gallery in 1991 with the installation The Carousel of Shapes. More recently, her work has featured in several group exhibitions at the gallery, including Lineages (2026), Material Sensibilities (2025), Transvangarde: Free Style Cipher (2024), and Transvangarde: Pushing Boundaries (2023).

“The multitude and multi shapes of Susanne Kessler’s work, which within the overall project consists of objects, models, films, drawings, and installations, is extremely impressive. In addition, it is fascinating to see how all works exhibit autonomy while also connecting with each other, and referring to the line that began at the origin of all creation—the line that interconnects everything. In a quasi-organic growth process, the line develops continuously—at times very abstractly, at times by way of linking and condensing. A more variegated artistic vision, like a musical fugue, is hardly imaginable.” - Ulrike Wolff-Thomsen, Director of the Museum Kunst der Westküste, 2018.

For sales enquiries please contact: art@octobergallery.co.uk Or call + 44 (0)20 7242 7367
View below for career highlights and works for sale by the artist.