Gabriel Lester (Amsterdam 1972) is an inventor,

visual artist The visual arts are art forms such as painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture, ceramics (art), ceramics, photography, video, image, filmmaking, design, crafts, and architecture. Many artistic disciplines such as performing arts, conceptual a ...

and

film director A film director or filmmaker is a person who controls a film's artistic and dramatic aspects and visualizes the screenplay (or script) while guiding the film crew and actors in the fulfillment of that Goal, vision. The director has a key role ...

living and working in Amsterdam.

Family

Lester was born in

Amsterdam Amsterdam ( , ; ; ) is the capital of the Netherlands, capital and Municipalities of the Netherlands, largest city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It has a population of 933,680 in June 2024 within the city proper, 1,457,018 in the City Re ...

on 6 February 1972, son of Mark Dunning Lester (

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

, USA 1947) and Frederika Rolande Wilhelmina Erwteman (

Brussels Brussels, officially the Brussels-Capital Region, (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) is a Communities, regions and language areas of Belgium#Regions, region of Belgium comprising #Municipalit ...

Belgium Belgium, officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. Situated in a coastal lowland region known as the Low Countries, it is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeas ...

1944, †

Groningen Groningen ( , ; ; or ) is the capital city and main municipality of Groningen (province), Groningen province in the Netherlands. Dubbed the "capital of the north", Groningen is the largest place as well as the economic and cultural centre of ...

Netherlands , Terminology of the Low Countries, informally Holland, is a country in Northwestern Europe, with Caribbean Netherlands, overseas territories in the Caribbean. It is the largest of the four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Nether ...

2006). Lester grew up in a cooperative commune named ‘Impuls’ in the small village of

Pieterburen Pieterburen is a village in the northeastern Netherlands, located in the municipality of Het Hogeland, Groningen. History Around 1300, a dike was built north of the present village. During the 14th century, a settlement appeared on a mudflat o ...

, in the province of Groningen (the Netherlands).

Music

In the nineteen eighties Lester became invested in early street and

hip-hop Hip-hop or hip hop (originally disco rap) is a popular music genre that emerged in the early 1970s from the African-American community of New York City. The style is characterized by its synthesis of a wide range of musical techniques. Hi ...

culture. He began graffiti writing under the ‘tag name’ Catch. Lester later produced and published rap and electronic music as Utile Connection and Definitely Def using so called

tape loops In music, tape loops are loops of magnetic tape used to create repetitive, rhythmic musical patterns or dense layers of sound when played on a tape recorder. Originating in the 1940s with the work of Pierre Schaeffer, they were used among con ...

, cassette decks and

turntables A phonograph, later called a gramophone, and since the 1940s a record player, or more recently a turntable, is a device for the mechanical and analogue reproduction of sound. The sound vibration Waveform, waveforms are recorded as correspond ...

before moving into digital samplers and sequencers.

Education and Residencies

In 1994, Lester attended a course of audiovisual arts at th
Sint Joost art academy
In 1995 Lester entered a course in experimental cinema at the Sint-Lukas Hogeschool in Brussels (Belgium). In 1999, Gabriel Lester started a two-year residency at the

Rijksakademie The Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten (State Academy of Fine Arts) was founded in 1870 in Amsterdam. It is a classical academy, a place where philosophers, academics and artists meet to test and exchange ideas and knowledge. The school supports ...

. Between 2003 and 2014 Lester was a resident a
IASPIS
Stockholm, Sweden
ISCP
New York, USA, ROAD
Capacete
mobile residency, Brazil & Peru
TWS Tokyo Wonder Site
Tokyo, Japan
Elam School of Art
Artist in Residence, Auckland, New Zealand.

Artistic practice

Visual artist, electronic musician, poet, and experiential filmmaker, Lester’s works consist of spatial installations, video installations, sculptures, performances, and short films. Other activities include commissioned art in public space, small scale architecture, mentoring and teaching. Lester’s practise has always been international, with many art residencies, group and solo exhibitions, gallery representations in Europe, North America, and Asia. Lester has participated in over twenty large scale international art exhibitions, such as the Documenta in Kassel and the biennale of Venice, Sao Paulo, Istanbul and Sydney. Lester’s creations originate from a desire to tell stories and establish contexts and settings that support these stories or propose their own narrative interpretation. His vocabulary is characterized as cinematographic, without necessarily employing film or video as a medium. However, like moviemaking, Lester’s practice has come to embrace and utilize all imaginable media and talent. With emphasis on human existence and experience, his projects aim to sharpen and flex the mind. Open ended, sustaining mystery and without obvious dogma or singular ideas, Lester proposes ways to relate to the world, how it is represented and what mechanisms and components constitute our perception and understanding of it. Lester currently resides in Amsterdam and is represented by th
Vanguard gallery
in Shanghai
Ryan Lee gallery
in New York and th
Fons Welters
in Amsterdam. Lester frequently collaborates with Raimundas Malašauskas, Aaron Schuster, Onco Tattje, Carlos Amorales, Job Chajes and Arnaud Hendrickx. Other collaborators include: Jennifer Tee, Freek Wambacq, Thomas Bakker, Herwig Weiser. Lester’s work is part of several public and private collections, including the

Stedelijk Museum The Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (; Municipal Museum Amsterdam), colloquially known as the Stedelijk, is a museum for modern art, contemporary art, and design located in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

, Amsterdam,

798 Art Zone 798 Art Zone (), or Dashanzi Art District, is a complex of 50-year-old decommissioned People's Liberation Army, military factory buildings boasting a unique architectural style that houses a thriving artistic community in Dashanzi, Chaoyang Di ...

Beijing, 21 Museum Nashville, Mudam Luxembourg, CitizenM, and

Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen Municipal Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen () is an art museum in Rotterdam in the Netherlands. The name of the museum is derived from its two most important donors, Frans Jacob Otto Boijmans and Daniël George van Beuningen. The museum is located a ...

, Rotterdam. Publications on the work of Gabriel Lester include: How to Act (monograph, Veenman publishers 2006), ‘Gabriel Lester’s Elevating the Witte de With’ (Paperkunsthalle 2007), ‘62 Gasoline Stations’ (artist book self-published 2007)
Forced Perspectives
(monograph, Sternberg Press 2015), Cinema Without Camera (2019)

PolyLester

PolyLester - established by Gabriel Lester and Martine Vledder in 2013 - is a multidisciplinary design studio focusing on artworks, public sculptures, architectural interventions, landscapes, and interior design. PolyLester works together with an array of architects, designers, including such prominent creatives as

Irma Boom Irma Boom (born 15 December 1960) is a Dutch graphic designer who specializes in bookmaking. Boom has been described as the "Queen of Books," having created over 300 books and is well reputed for her artistic autonomy within her field. Her bold ...

, Beau Architects,

Monadnock An inselberg or monadnock ( ) is an isolated rock hill, knob, ridge, or small mountain that rises abruptly from a gently sloping or virtually level surrounding plain. In Southern Africa, a similar formation of granite is known as a koppie, an ...

Rem Koolhaas Remment Lucas Koolhaas (; born 17 November 1944) is a Dutch architect, architectural theory, architectural theorist, urbanist and Professor in Practice of Architecture and Urban Design at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, Graduate School of ...

, URA Architects, Richard Niessen,

Hella Jongerius Hella Jongerius (born 30 May 1963 in De Meern, Utrecht) is a Dutch industrial designer. Biography Jongerius was born in De Meern, a village to the west of Utrecht in the Netherlands in 1963. From 1988 to 1993, she studied design at the Design ...

and Jennifer Tee.

Curriculum

Selected solo exhibitions *2020 Holes in the Sky - Machinery of Me, Arnhem Netherlands *2017 Aeon and Lester’s Loops Groninger museum, Groningen (NL) *If you happen to be Ryan Lee gallery, New York (USA) *2016 Apple Z De Appel Art center, Amsterdam (NL) *The 9 Day Week CAC museum, Vilnius (LT) *2014 The Ears Have Walls Leo Xu Projects, Shanghai (CH) *Follies Bonner Kunstverein, Bonn (D) *Blank Stare Gus Fisher Gallery, Auckland (NZ) *2012 Roxy Minsheng Museum, Shanghai (CH) *The Future that Was NASA/Smart, Amsterdam (NL) *2011 Suspension of Disbelief Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam (NL) *2009 ProMotion Z33, Hasselt (B) Selected group exhibitions *Busan Biennale, South Korea *Heaven, Hell & Earth Stedelijk museum Den Bosch *Kochi Biennale, India *Moscow biennale Moscow (RUS) *Istanbul biennale Istanbul (TUR) *Sydney biennale Sydney (AUS) *Marrakesh Biennale Marrakesh (MOR) *CAFA museum Beijing (CH) *2013 Garden of Diversion Sifang museum, Nanjing (CH) *Performa 13 New York (USA) *Venice Biennale Venice (IT) *Sharjah Bienniale Sharjah (UAE) *2012 dOCUMENTA (13) Kassel (D) *Sao Paulo Biennial (BR) *Secret Ninth Planet MA CCA, San Francisco (USA) *Slow Movement Kunsthalle Bern (CH)

Boards / Positions

*2016 - 2019 Main tutor Fine Arts Sandberg, Rietveld, Amsterdam *2013 – 2020 Teacher Audio Visual Department Rietveld, Amsterdam *2014 – 2015 Artist in Residence Academie van Bouwkunst, AHK, Amsterdam *2016 – now Board Melly center for contemporary art, Rotterdam *2014 – now Board The One Minutes Foundation, Amsterdam

Gallery

File:Gabriel Lester transition 2012 documenta 13.JPG, Gabriel Lester, Transition,

DOCUMENTA (13) Documenta 13 (stylised as dOCUMENTA (13)) was the thirteenth edition of the German contemporary art exhibition Documenta. It took place between 9 June until 16 September 2012 in Kassel, Germany. The exhibition was held under the theme "collap ...

, 2012.

References

External links

*
PolyLester

LestarFilm

Artist Page At Fons Welters Gallery

Ryan Lee Gallery

Lester's News at Leo Xu Projects
# https://web.archive.org/web/20121024205429/http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/gabriel_lester/ # http://www.tokyoartbeat.com/tablog/entries.en/2006/10/interview_with_gabriel_lester.html # http://www.trouwamsterdam.nl/2010/12/8-dec-beamclub-16-gabriel-lester/ # https://web.archive.org/web/20101206175349/http://boijmans.nl/en/7/calendar-exhibitions/calendaritem/625/gabriel-lester * Gabriel Lester a
Artist Pension Trust
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lester, Gabriel 1972 births Living people Dutch contemporary artists Artists from Amsterdam People from De Marne