Kevin B. Chen is a visual artist, curator, and educator currently serving as Curator at the Fine Arts Gallery at San Francisco State University, faculty at San Francisco State University and California College of the Arts, and a member of Recology's Artist in Residence Program Advisory Board and Root Division's Curatorial Committee. He previously served as co-chair for the City of Oakland's Public Art Advisory Committee, managed the de Young Museum’s Artist Residency Program and Public Programs, and taught at Stanford University and Mills College.

As an independent curator, he has organized exhibitions and events for Headlands Center for the Arts, Minnesota Street Project, San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco Arts Commission Galleries, San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, University of Nevada Reno, SOMArts Cultural Center, and Chinese Culture Center of San Francisco & Kearny Street Workshop. His curatorial work has been reviewed in publications nationally, including Art in America, afterimage: the journal of media arts and cultural criticism, Sculpture Magazine, Art Papers, Art Practical, New Art Examiner, Art Nexus, Bidoun Magazine, Hyperallergic, Contemporary Magazine, and Bitch Magazine. He has delivered lectures and participated in panel discussions at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Manetti Shrem Museum of Art, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Asian Art Museum, and at annual conferences for Americans for the Arts and California Association of Museums.

He was Program Director of Visual Arts at Intersection for the Arts for over 15 years, where he curated over 70 exhibitions and hundreds of public programs, including solo exhibitions by Lebbeus Woods, Jenny Odell, Ala Ebtekar, Margaret Harrison, Hasan Elahi, Taraneh Hemami, Jamex & Einar de la Torre, Conrad Atkinson, Binh Danh, Weston Teruya & Michele Carlson, Victor Cartagena, and Marcos Ramírez ERRE. He has been a funding and residency panelist (Creative Capital Foundation, Multi-Arts Production Fund, Alliance of Artists Communities, Creative Work Fund, City of San Jose, SF Arts Commission, Headlands Center for the Arts), an exhibition juror (CCA, SF Camerawork, CSU Chico, Root Division, Pro Arts Gallery), and author of catalog essays (The Third Line – Art Gallery in Dubai, Paper Museum Press/Park Life, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Light Work, AKAAKA Art Publishing).

His own work in drawing, collage, and sculpture has been exhibited locally at San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, Southern Exposure, Asian Art Museum, Palo Alto Art Center, Kala Art Institute, Root Division, Blankspace, Ampersand International Arts, Kearny Street Workshop, LoBot Gallery, CSU Chico, and nationally at Angel’s Gate Cultural Center (San Pedro, CA), Bob Rauschenberg Gallery (Ft. Myers, FL), Harn Museum of Art (Gainesville, FL), Bruno David Gallery (St. Louis, MO), New York University Tisch School of the Arts (New York, NY), and The Kitchen (New York, NY). He received his BA in Psychology and East Asian Languages & Cultures from Columbia University and is represented by Jack Fischer Gallery in San Francisco, CA.

Photo credit: Scott Chernis