Wesley Kimler was born in Billings, Montana. Largely self-taught, his college campus was effectively a conflation of the streets of Afghanistan, the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, and the Laguna Gloria School of Art in Austin, Texas. His work can be found in many collections, private and public. Of his work in the group show Constellations at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Margaret Hawkins --critic for the Chicago Sun Times-- said: But categories hardly matter. Perhaps the most stunning gallery is also the largest and most loosely defined, the room devoted to fantasy. It is anchored by two enormous paintings -- a Chuck Close portrait of Cindy Sherman on one end and Wesley Kimler's tour de force "Umurbrogol," which despite its somber subject features vast swaths of delicious pink and purple paint. Some of the less imposing works here may be as memorable. William Baziotes' "Cat" is a satisfying discovery, as is Brice Marden's abstract meditation on the light and color of olive groves in Greece.
