KEN TISA
Ken Tisa was born in Philadelphia, PA, in 1945. He received his BFA from Pratt Institute in 1968 and his MFA from Yale School of Art and Architecture in 1971. He currently lives and works in New York, NY.
Tisa is one of the most important artists living today to emerge from the downtown artistic community of New York City in the early 1970’s. He is best known for his brilliant beaded textile wall-hangings and his paintings that have an indefatigable attention to detail. His work is historically significant not only in itself as artworks but in its influence on a wide-assortment of well-known artists and writers over the past six decades. Tisa has held numerous solo exhibitions at venues including Kate Werble Gallery, New York, NY (2023, 2017, 2013); Gordon Robichaux, New York, NY (2017); Centre d’Art et de culture, Aix-Provence, France (2007, 2004); Pinkard Gallery, Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, MD (2006); Sara Penn, New York, NY (2-person exhibition, 1999); Stellweg Seguy Gallery, New York, NY (1988); Alexander Wood Gallery, New York, NY (1986); Genesis Gallery, Altos de Chavon, Dominican Republic (1983); Art Latitude Gallery, New York, NY (1981); and Fischbach Gallery, New York, NY (1972).
Over the past four decades, his work has been featured in exhibitions at institutions such as the The Philadelphia Museum of Art, (Philadelphia, PA); La Salle University Art Museum (Philadelphia, PA); the Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College (Saratoga, NY); Terrault Contemporary (Baltimore, MD); The Philbrook Museum of Art (Tulsa, OK); MoMA PS1 (Long Island City, NY); Artist’s Space (New York, NY); Art in General (New York, NY); Gray Gallery (New York, NY); and PS122 Gallery (New York, NY). He was featured in the 1975 Whitney Biennial, at the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York, NY).
Tisa’s works have been reviewed in publications such as The New York Times, New York Magazine, Miami New Times, and ArtInfo. He has been a contributing author of six publications, including: Art To Wear (New York: Abbeville, 1986), ZZZZZ: [poems] (Calais, VT: Z, 1976), Nine Years in a Wind Tunnel: Being Pages from the Hotel Firbank Archive (including Songs from the Asylum) (London: Aloes, 1978), Bimbo Dirt (Calais, VT: Z, 1981), The New Beadwork (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1992), and 500 Beaded Objects: New Dimensions in Contemporary Beadwork (New York: Lark, 2004).