Dean Kessmann has had one-person exhibitions at William Shearburn Gallery, St. Louis, MO, Furthermore, Washington, DC, Orlando Museum of Art, Orlando, FL, Conner Contemporary Art, Washington, DC, Humanity Center Galleries, California State University, Chico, CA, White Flag Projects, St. Louis, MO, Regina Gouger Miller Gallery, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, School 33 Art Center, Baltimore, MD, and the Forum for Contemporary Art, St. Louis, MO; his work has been shown in two and three-person exhibitions at Duet and Ellen Curlee Gallery, St. Louis, MO, School 33 Art Center, Baltimore, MD, and 1708 Gallery, Richmond, VA; and finally, he has been included in group exhibitions at a variety of other venues, including: Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, ME, American University Museum, Washington, DC, Page Bond Gallery, Richmond, VA, The American Association for the Advancement of Science, MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA, Cerasoli Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, Museum of Contemporary Religious Art, St. Louis, MO, The Photographic Resource Center, Boston, MA, Project Row Houses, Houston, TX, and ARC Gallery, Chicago, IL, among others.
Kessmann’s exhibitions have been reviewed in a variety of publications, including Art Papers, The Huffington Post, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, and ARTFORUM magazine. Work from his project, Art as Paper as Potential: Giving/Receiving, was reproduced in Contact Sheet: The Light Work Annual, along with an essay by Tim Wride, Curator of Photography, Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, FL. A catalogue was produced for his exhibition, Architectural Intersections, at Conner Contemporary Art in Washington, DC, which includes an essay written by Karen Irvine, Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, IL. An earlier exhibition catalogue was produced in conjunction with his exhibition, Plastic on Paper, at White Flag Projects in St. Louis, MO; Kristen Hileman, Curator of Contemporary Art at The Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD, wrote the essay for this publication.
Kessmann has received numerous Artist Fellowship Grant Awards from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, as well as a Franz and Virginia Bader Fund Grant. He has been a semi-finalist for the Sondheim Prize and has won awards from The Trawick Prize. In 2009 he was an artist-in-residence at Light Work in Syracuse, NY. Additionally, many important institutions have collected his work, such as the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Baltimore Museum of Art, Walker Art Center, The Phillips Collection, Museum of Contemporary Photography, Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Orlando Museum of Art, Light Work, and Museum of Contemporary Religious Art, among others.
Kessmann is an Associate Professor of Photography at The George Washington University, where he teaches at the undergraduate and graduate levels.