How can I buy a work by Chris Kahler?

Bruno David Gallery handles the sale of available works by Chris Kahler. For prices and availability, email info@brunodavidgallery.com or call +1 314 696 2377.

Where can I see work by Chris Kahler in person?

At Bruno David Gallery, 7513 Forsyth Boulevard, Saint Louis, Missouri 63105, during public hours or by appointment. His work is also in the collections of Daum Museum of Contemporary Art.

What does Chris Kahler make?

Abstract paintings and works on paper in dense, saturated color, poured and layered flat in acrylic, gel medium and watercolor, in which biomorphic forms suggesting cells and organisms meet networks of line and hard-edged geometry.

Where is Chris Kahler based?

Chris Kahler lives and works in Charleston, Illinois.

Has Chris Kahler had an exhibition at Bruno David Gallery?

Yes. FLUX (7 November to 20 December 2025); FLUID (20 September 2024 to 25 January 2025) are among his exhibitions at the gallery. Catalogues can be read in the gallery’s Publications library at brunodavidgallery.com/publications.

Chris Kahler

Chris Kahler (born 1969) is an Illinois-based painter who makes abstract paintings and works on paper in dense, saturated color. Biomorphic forms suggesting cells, microbes and other organisms crowd against networks of line and hard-edged geometry, so that a surface can read as a microscopic view, a map or an architectural plan. Gallery texts relate the work to abstract expressionism, color field, psychedelia, op art and pop art.

Kahler works flat, on a table or the floor, pouring and layering acrylic, gel medium and watercolor, sanding layers back and leaving some results to chance. His series turn on systems of growth, mutation and breakdown; one curator called his Viral paintings “metonyms for any system under attack.” Remix (2022) reused paint saved over some twenty years in small works on paper, FLUID (2024) combined watercolor, gouache, acrylic, Mylar and collage, and FLUX (2025) used interference pigments and translucent layers on panel to explore opalescent color.

Kahler received a BFA from Ohio Wesleyan University in 1990, an MA from Eastern Illinois University in 1992 and an MFA from Northwestern University in 1995, where he studied with Ed Paschke, James Valerio and William Conger. He has taught at Eastern Illinois University in Charleston since 1999, has chaired its art department, now Art + Design, since 2016, and in July 2025 also became interim director of the university’s Tarble Museum of Art, formerly the Tarble Arts Center.

He has had solo exhibitions at the International Museum of Surgical Science, Chicago (2002), the University of Saint Francis, Fort Wayne (2009), Valencia College, Orlando (2011), the Richard M. Ross Art Museum at Ohio Wesleyan University (2014) and Southeast Missouri State University (2015), and has been a resident artist at the Vermont Studio Center. The Daum Museum of Contemporary Art in Sedalia, Missouri, owns his painting Viral A-9 (2007) and has included his work in its collection exhibitions Spectrum (2025) and Under Pressure (2026). Kahler has shown with Bruno David Gallery since the mid-2000s; the gallery has published a dozen catalogues of his work, from Viral (2007) to FLUID (2024), and FLUX (2025) was his fourteenth solo exhibition there.

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