Gabriel Lester (Amsterdam 1972) is an inventor, visual artist and film director living and working in Amsterdam.
Gabriel Lester (Amsterdam 1972) is an inventor, visual artist and film director living and working in Amsterdam.
Born in Amsterdam to a New York–born father and a Brussels–born mother. He grew up in a commune in Pieterburen, Groningen.
In the 1980s Lester was active in early street and hip-hop culture. He wrote graffiti under the name Catch and produced rap and electronic music as Utile Connection and Definitely Def, first with tape loops, cassette decks and turntables, later with samplers and sequencers.
1994 Sint Joost School of Art and Design, audiovisual arts Sint Joost art academy
1995 Sint-Lukas Hogeschool, Brussels, experimental cinema
1999–2001 Rijksakademie, Amsterdam
Residencies include IASPIS (Stockholm), ISCP (New York), Capacete (Brazil and Peru), TWS Tokyo Wonder Site (Tokyo) and Elam School of Art (Auckland).
Lester’s work includes spatial and video installations, sculptures, performances and short films, as well as public art, small-scale architecture, mentoring and teaching. His international practice spans residencies, exhibitions and gallery representation in Europe, North America and Asia. He has participated in leading exhibitions such as Documenta (Kassel) and the biennials of Venice, São Paulo, Istanbul and Sydney. Rooted in storytelling, his work creates contexts that support or reinterpret narratives. While his visual language is cinematic, it extends across media. With an emphasis on human experience, his projects invite reflection on perception, representation and our relationship to the world.
Lester currently resides in Amsterdam and is represented by the Vanguard gallery in Shanghai and Ryan Lee gallery in New York.
Lester’s work is part of several public and private collections, including the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, 798 Art Zone Beijing, 21 Museum Nashville, Mudam Luxembourg, CitizenM, and Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, 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)
Founded in 2013 by Gabriel Lester and Martine Vledder, PolyLester is a multidisciplinary studio for artworks, public sculptures, architectural interventions, landscapes and interior design.
Selected solo exhibitions
Selected group exhibitions and Biennales
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