Eric Wesley
Eric Wesley is an American artist who works with a variety of media including sculpture and painting. He is based in Los Angeles.
Biography
Wesley was born and raised in Los Angeles, California, the son of two social workers. As a child, he planned to become an aeronaturical engineer. He earned a fine arts degree from University of California, Los Angeles in 1996. While Wesley primarily works from Los Angeles, he previously had a studio in Berlin.Wesley's work encompasses sculpture and painting, among other media, and have been displayed around the world. He has held solo exhibitions at galleries including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and Foundation Morra Greco, Naples, Italy. He has participated in group shows at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles; CAPC musée d'art contemporain, Bordeaux; Fundación/Colección, Mexico City; ARCOS Museo d’Arte, Benevento, Italy; the Prague Biennial in 2007; Institute of Contemporary Arts, London; P.S. 1, New York; the Whitney, New York; and the Studio Museum in Harlem. His work was part of the collection TV executive Dean Valentine donated to the Hammer Museum in 2007. He has worked extensively with China Art Objects Galleries, Bortolami Gallery, and Maureen Paley. He was included on ArtReviews Future Greats list in 2005 and 2008.
He is also the co-founder of Mountain School of Art in Los Angeles, an artist-run nomadic school that he opened in January 2006 with Piero Golia. They accept 15 fellows annually to a three-month program. The classes are free and all staff are volunteers. In 2008, Wesley told ArtReview that it was less of an art school and more of "an institution patterned on the university model and devoted to general education, with a curriculum grounded in science, philosophy and law."