Marcus Herse

Marcus Herse is a German artist, curator, and lecturer. His curatorial practice explores how perception, embodiment, and cultural narratives intersect across disciplines. Through exhibitions that bridge art, science, and social inquiry, he examines how systems of representation and meaning interconstitute sensory experience, spatial awareness, and collective memory. His projects often bring together diverse media, experimental formats, and interdisciplinary collaborations, creating platforms where critical reflection, embodied knowledge, and technological mediation converge.

His transdisciplinary artistic investigations focus on the embodied perception of space and experiential context as (dis)continuous, the subjective engagement with architectural and utilitarian structures, and the process-driven production of representations. Influenced by contemporary critical theory, Herse’s work emphasizes embodied cognition, phenomenology, and principles of spatial theory in relation to the built environment.

Herse graduated from the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and deepened his studies as part of a DAAD postgraduate scholarship at the University of California, Los Angeles. He has exhibited internationally, including in institutional group exhibitions at Schmela Haus Kunstsammlung NRW, Düsseldorf, Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen Düsseldorf, Villa Romana, Florence, MUHKA, Antwerp, Belgium, and Torrance Art Museum, Torrance, CA. His solo exhibitions have been reviewed in Artforum, Flash Art International, and the Los Angeles Times, among others. He co-founded and -directed the artist-run gallery JB Jurve in Los Angeles from 2009 - 2012. He is currently the director of  the Guggenheim Gallery at Chapman University.