Barbara Kasten (b. 1936 in Chicago, Illinois) lives and works in Chicago. She received her BFA from the University of Arizona in 1959 and MFA from the California College of Arts and Crafts in 1970. Kasten’s practice centers around an exploration of the nature of perception and materiality. Her photographic output has been essential to the last decade of multi-disciplinary work in sculpture, video, installation, and public art. These works continue to examine an object’s presence within both illusionistic and real space. Forms—designated by shadow, color, and the space between objects—oscillate between representation and abstraction.

Her work has been exhibited across the United States and Europe. Most recently, Kasten’s first institutional solo exhibition in the UK, Site Lines, was mounted at the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill-On-Sea, East Sussex, England. Her major survey exhibition at Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Germany (2020), traveled to Sammlung Goetz, Germany (2022-23). Other recent exhibitions include Barbara Kasten: Scenarios, Aspen Art Museum (2020-21); Women in Abstraction, Centre Pompidou, Paris, France, and Museo Guggenheim Bilbao, Spain (2021); the 2020 Busan Biennale: Words at an Exhibition an exhibition in ten chapters and five poems, South Korea; Shape of Light: 100 Years of Photography and Abstract Art, Tate Modern, London (2018); Sharjah Biennial 14: Leaving the Echo Chamber, Sharjah Art Foundation, UAE; and STAGES, a retrospective at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia that traveled to the Graham Foundation in Chicago and the MOCA Pacific Design Center (2015-16). Her work is featured in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Guggenheim Museum in New York; Tate Modern, London; the High Museum of Art, Atlanta; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Centre Pompidou, Paris; and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C., among many others. In April 2025, Kasten will have a solo exhibition at The Glass House in New Canaan, CT.