Arnold Kemp

Arnold J. Kemp is an American artist that works in painting, print, sculpture, and poetry. Kemp received a BA/BFA from Tufts University and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and an MFA from Stanford University.

From 1991 to 2005, Kemp lived and worked in San Francisco, CA, where he showed works independently and was a curator at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. More recently, he was chair of the MFA in Visual Studies at Pacific Northwest College of Art PNCA in Portland, Oregon. He also served as Painting and Printmaking Chair & Associate Professor at the School of the Arts, Virginia Commonwealth University. Currently he is Dean of Graduate studies at School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Professor of Painting and Drawing.

In 2001, he first showed work in New York at the Studio Museum's "Freestyle" Exhibition. The "Freestyle" exhibition was discussed in the context of the Post-black art movement, a moment where black artists confronted and abandoned the label of being 'black' artists.

Significant works of Kemp’s are in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Studio Museum in Harlem, The Berkeley Art Museum, The Portland Art Museum, The Tacoma Art Museum, and the Fine Arts Collection at the University of California, Davis.

In 2012, Kemp was awarded a Fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

• Biquini Wax, Mexico City, Mexico 2017

•Iceberg Projects, Chicago, IL 2017 •Cherry & Lucic, Portland, OR 2016 •Soloway, Brooklyn, NY 2015 • PDX Contemporary, Portland, OR (2009 & 2010)

• Patricia Sweetow Gallery, San Francisco (2009)
• Envoy, New York (2008)
• TBA Festival/ Portland Institute of Contemporary Art, Portland, Oregon (2007),
• Stephen Wirtz Gallery, San Francisco (2006)
• Quotidian Gallery, San Francisco (2002)
• Debs & Co., New York (2001).
• ESP, San Francisco (1998)