Perry ChenUS/FR
Perry Chen is an artist and the founder of Kickstarter. He approaches his work with an openness to both form and context. Chen created Kickstarter as a way for fellow artists and musicians to raise money for their projects. In 2015, he spearheaded Kickstarter’s conversion to a Public Benefit Corporation, formalizing the company’s commitment to public benefit over optimizing for profit. He currently serves the company as chairman.
In his studio practice, Chen often explores how we negotiate a world of growing complexity and uncertainty, using a “journalistic process / artistic output” approach to explore subject matter. His work has been exhibited in New York, Mexico City, Vienna, Berlin, and São Paulo; primarily in institutional or site-specific contexts.
From 2017-18, Chen served on the Knight Commission on Trust, Media, and Democracy to help examine the collapse in trust in U.S. democratic institutions, media and journalism, and the information ecosystem. In 2013 he was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine. He was born and raised in New York City, and is currently based in Paris.
