Erik Kessels is a Dutch artist, curator and communication designer, with great interest in art and photography. Erik Kessels is since 1996 Creative Partner of communications agency KesselsKramer in Amsterdam/London and has created campaigns for national and international clients such as Nike, Heineken, Diesel, Oxfam, Vitra, Citizen M, I amsterdam and The Hans Brinker Budget Hotel.
As an artist and curator Kessels has published over 90 books of his 're-appropriated' images and has written the international bestseller Failed It!
He has taught at several Art Academies (Amsterdam, Milan, Toronto, Lausanne, Düsseldorf).
Kessels made and curated exhibitions such as Loving Your Pictures, Mother Nature, 24HRS in Photos, Album Beauty and Unfinished Father. Currently he’s working on a long-term European art project called Europe Archive.
In 2010 Kessels was awarded with the Amsterdam Prize of the Arts, in 2016 nominated for the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize. Until 2022 his mid-career retrospective is shown in Turin, Düsseldorf, Budapest, Rotterdam and he exhibited recently in the SFMOMA. He was called “a visual sorcerer” by Time Magazine and a “Modern Anthropologist” by Voque (Italia).