Richard Kamler: A Retrospective

January 27, 2012 to March 4, 2012

Richard Kamler: A Retrospective includes early sketchbooks, installation works, drawings and photographic documentation that trace his career using art as a catalyst for social change.

Iconic pieces from each decade will be on display, among them selections from “Impact Drawings,” “Out of the Holocaust: Drawings and Environments,” and SFMOMA-sponsored “The Desert Project” (1970s); “Maximum Security 1-8: Installations” and “El Greco” (1980s); “Table of Voices” and “Bison Project” (1990s); and “Seeing Peace” and “Las Mujeres de Juarez” (2000s). To create these works, Richard Kamler has collaborated with individuals and groups as far reaching as death row inmates, interfaith communities and the United Nations.

Throughout his career, Kamler has maintained his strong belief that “art can make the world a better place….art is an agent for social change…our fuel and our glue.” Beginning in 1981, Kamler spent two years as Artist-in-Residence in San Quentin Prison. Through his close examination of the penal system, he created the central works of his career: the “Table of Voices,” a sound installation giving voice to both victims and perpetrators that was instrumental in developing a victim/offender reconciliation program at the San Francisco County Jail and the “Waiting Room” in Huntsville, Texas. Human rights continues to be a central theme of his work.

Kamler's art has been exhibited in a range of venues, from Alcatraz Island to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, from the East Jerusalem Cultural Center to San Francisco Bay, from the Bischoff Gallery in Cologne, Germany to the grounds of the San Francisco County Jail and the Art Space in New York. Kamler has received a NEA Visual Arts Fellowship, several CA Arts Council Artist Residencies, a California Fellowship, an artist fellowship from the George Soros Foundation and the Adaline Kent Award from the San Francisco Art Institute. He has a M. Arch from UC Berkeley and is a Professor Emeritus of the Department of Art + Architecture at the University of San Francisco. From 1963 to 1965, he was an apprentice to Frederick Kiesler, the visionary painter, sculptor and architect.

Four Decades of Art Activism

A fishbowl conversation moderated by Richard Kamler with Tom Ferentz, Judith Selby Lang, Peter Selz, and Scott Tsuchitani 
Fri, Jan 27, 7-9 pm
Intersection for the Arts, 925 Mission (at 5th Street)

Richard Kamler and Robert Atkins In Conversation

Thurs, Feb 2 and Wed, Feb 8, 2:30-3:30 pm
McLaren 250, USF (at Clayton)

Opening Reception and Birthday Celebration

Thurs, Feb 2, 4-6 pm
Thacher Gallery
Photo Gallery

Meet the Artist

Saturdays, Feb 4, 11, 18 and 25, 11 am to 1 pm
Thacher Gallery

List of objects in A Retrospective exhibit