Paul Kos

The first major retrospective of his work “Everything Matters” (2003) was held at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. A second major survey of the artist's work, "Equilibrium: A Paul Kos Survey" (2016) was held at di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art in Napa.

The work Pawn was completed in 1991, and featured 2,500 plastic magnetic chess pieces, steel panel on the wall, and wood. The steel panel is on the wall, with the magnetic red chess (kings, queens, knights, bishops and castles) pieces forming the shape of a single chess pawn. These pieces don't mimic pawn's symmetry but the illusion of light and shadow in bright red. This work is a metaphor for the relations between the world's powerful and the powerless. The red pawn also presents a metaphor for life under Communism.

Tower of Babel was created in 1989 and is an 20‐channel video installation, with a large, spiral‐ shaped metal armature (Vladimir Tatlin–inspired) the supported the monitors. On the monitors are 75 different people speaking in 50 different languages. Cacophony seems indecipherable, unless a viewer comes closer to individual monitors. The work criticizes divisions between different cultures and advocates international understanding. This piece is inspired by a Biblical story of the Tower of Babel in which people used to speak only one language before they became too ambitious and tried to build a tower to the heavens, God made them speak different languages so that they could not understand each other.

Kos is the recipient of numerous awards, including Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Fellowship (1985); John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation fellowship in video and audio (1990); multiple National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) fellowships; and Flintridge Foundation Fellowship award (1999). Kos held the Dodd Chair at the University of Georgia.

Kos taught at San Francisco Art Institute for 30 years, starting in 1978 and he was influential in the development of the New Genres Department (previously named the Performance/Video Department).

A conceptual art piece, first produced in 1970. The work includes 10 boom microphones plugged into an active sound system recorded the sound of 25 pound blocks of ice melting in a metal pan on the floor. The photographic image of the installation has an absurdity about it. It asks the question, "what does ice sound like as it melts?"

In 1969, Tom Marioni organized and curated Paul Kos' first solo exhibition, Participationkinetics, at the Richmond Art Center.

In the mid-1960s he worked on abstract fiberglass sculptures, but he then turned away from those to more site-specific art. During the 1970s Kos collaborated with his former wife Marlene Kos, together they produced numerous videos and installations. His work has a strong connection to the natural world and often has a religious dimension. He does not limit himself to one type of media, because his work is conceptual he will often pick the medium to best suit the concept. He will often hire people to help with the technical aspects of the work, if need be. He agrees to technological updates to his work (such as older video work) if they are needed, as long as the sensibility and feeling remains the same.

Paul Joseph Kos (born December 23, 1942) is an American conceptual artist and educator, he is one of the founders of the Bay Area Conceptual Art movement in California. Kos incorporates video, sound and interactivity into his sculptural installations. Currently Kos lives and works in San Francisco.

Paul Kos was born December 23, 1942 in Rock Springs, Wyoming, to parents Bertha Kos and small-town doctor Paul A. Kos. He moved from Wyoming to San Francisco in the early 1960s. He received both his B.F.A degree in 1965 and M.F.A degree in 1967 from the San Francisco Art Institute.