
Zilvinas Kempinas graduated from the Vilnius Art Academy in 1993 and received his MFA from Hunter College, City University of New York in 2002. Kempinas has exhibited extensively internationally with solo shows at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Centre (New York), Palais de Tokyo (Paris), Contemporary Art Centre (Vilnius, Lithuania), Kunsthalle Wien (Vienna), Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art (Gateshead, UK), Garage Center for Contemporary Culture (Moscow), Museum Tinguely (Basel), Reykjavik Art Museum (Iceland), Laboratory K20 (Dusseldorf), Socrates Sculpture Park (New York), Kunsthalle Budapest (Hungary), Kunstraum Dornbirn (Austria), Liberté! Saison Culturelle 2019, Bordeaux (France), Spencer Brownstone Gallery (New York), Galeria Leme (São Paulo), Galerija Vartai (Vilnius), Yvon Lambert (Paris, New York).
Selected group exhibitions include Manifesta 7 (Bolzano, Italy), Nam June Paik Art Center (Yongin City, Korea), SFMOMA (San Francisco, USA), Lunds Konsthall (Lund, Sweden), MoMA (New York), Liverpool Biennial (UK), Yokohama Triennale (Japan), Nuit Blanche (Paris), Espaces Culturel Louis Vuitton (Paris), Museum of Contemporary Art, Avignon (France), Beaufort 04 (Belgium), Echigo-Tsumari Triennale (Niigata, Japan), Centre Pompidou (Paris), Toyota Municipal Museum of Art (Japan), Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais (Paris), Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum (Michigan, USA), Queensland Art Gallery (Brisbane, Australia), Kunsthalle Osnabrück (Germany), Sculpture by the Sea (Aarhus, Denmark/Bondi, Cottesloe, Australia), Kunsthal Rotterdam (Netherlands), ZKM Center for Art and Media, (Karlsruhe, Germany), Brno House of Arts (Czech Republic).
Kempinas was the recipient of the biannual Calder Prize in 2007 and in 2008, lived for six months in Saché, France during his residency at Atelier Calder. He represented the Lithuanian Pavilion at the 53rd Venice Biennale in 2009, and was awarded the Lithuanian National Prize in 2012. He lives and works in New York.