This month’s events—all free and open to the public—at the School of Visual Arts.
Photograph by Kieran Cartwright, 17, Etobicoke School of the Arts, Ontariom Canada. On view at “We The Public: Engagement, Action, and Each Other.”
Photograph by Kieran Cartwright, 17, Etobicoke School of the Arts, Ontariom Canada. On view at “We The Public: Engagement, Action, and Each Other.”
The shortest month is also one of the fullest for exhibitions and events at SVA. Long-running lecture series return to classrooms and Zoom, bringing some of the most renowned names from across the art world to the College, and shows by students and faculty offer an impressive array of fine art, photography, installations, and community collaborations.
EXHIBITIONS
Through Wednesday, February 5 | “Under the Skin” | 132 West 21st Street, 10th floor
MA Curatorial Practice presents an exhibition curated by student Yvetta Zheng that explores the interplay between surface and essence and invites viewers to look through the obvious to engage with the radiant, unspoken qualities that define what they observe, whether it’s a painting, an object, a person, or a life event. Surfaces, whether physical, social, or cultural, serve as both a medium of visibility and a veil that can obscure deeper meanings while also acting as an invitation to a different realm.
Through Saturday, February 8 | “Next Up: Reverberations” | SVA Gramercy Gallery
An exhibition of multimedia work by nine SVA students selected by a jury of notable alumni is part of the new SVA Galleries juried series, “Next Up.” The artists in this exhibition create work in conversation with personal and social histories, weaving these varied strands of inspiration into a material to cut, layer, and piece together social commentary. Across drawings, installations, paintings, and sculpture, their respective practices connect past causes with present effects, prompting questions on the best way to move forward.
Through Friday, February 28 | “We the Public” | Online
BFA Photography and Video presents “We the Public: Engagement, Action, and Each Other,” an exhibition of work from the department’s 2024 global contest for high school students. Giving voice to up-and-coming creative talents in photography and video, “We the Public” showcases various perspectives that explore the civil and the civic. High school students were asked to submit work considering the questions: What are our hopes, needs, and responsibilities, both individually and collectively? How do we participate in community, caring for each other and our shared resources? And how can we affect change on local, state, national, and global levels?
Sunday, February 2 – Tuesday, February 18 | “Inhabited By” | SVA Flatiron Gallery
“Inhabited By” is an exhibition of thesis work by five senior students in the BFA Visual and Critical Studies program, curated by artist and faculty member Kayla Gibbons (BFA 2011 Fine Arts). Each of the five artists in the exhibition are compelled by the call to create and propelled by the desire to foster human connection through their varied material and conceptual inquiries.
Evelyn Brabant, Lose Yourself | Fine Affliction Series, 2024, gouache and inkjet print. On view at “Next Up: Reverberations.”
Evelyn Brabant, Lose Yourself | Fine Affliction Series, 2024, gouache and inkjet print. On view at “Next Up: Reverberations.”
An exhibition of mixed-media works by BFA Fine Arts students, curated by department chair Suzanne Anker and Lizzie Scott, Samuel Sherman, and Gunars Prande (MFA 1993 Fine Arts; BFA 1982 Media Arts). This show combines a range of works in concept, memory and critique. Sound is converted to images, AI speaks back, and gel transfers replicate painting. Painting, too, stands on its own, evoking images of self, society, and even death. The wide range of materials on view is a metaphor for the wide range of options currently open to image-making. It represents the fragmentation of focus that the Internet employs thanks to interspersing advertising with news and shopping options.
BFA Visual and Critical Studies presents “Greetings from Pandemic Island,” an exhibition of pigment prints on acrylic, digital prints on paper, and projections by BFA Comics and BFA Illustration chair Viktor Koen (MFA 1992 Illustration as Visual Essay), curated by Manolis Moresopoulos, artistic director of the Athens Photo Festival, and initially conceived as a set of postcards, “Greetings from Pandemic Island” evolved into a pictorial bridge between the 1918–19 influenza and COVID-19 pandemics. Spanning a turbulent century, the series documents the brutal realities of such crises by questioning issues of personal and collective responsibility, humanity, and gross indifference but also highlights an intricate web of long-existing layers of racial and socioeconomic disparities catalyzed by the epidemic.
Wednesday, February 26 – Thursday, March 13 | “space” | SVA Flatiron Gallery
An exhibition of multimedia artworks by 21 MPS Art Therapy students with collaborators from their internship sites and communities, “space,” is curated by Elizabeth DelliCarpini, department internship coordinator and program faculty member. Works included in “space” reflect the artists’ ambition to negotiate intrapersonal, interpersonal, and physical space through art. This community art therapy practice calls for participants to open up and occupy space by examining their positionality. The therapeutic goal of “space” is to build common ground within a collective community.
Viktor Koen (MFA 1992 Illustration as Visual Essay), Rorschach, 2022, digital print on paper. On view at “Greetings from Pandemic Island.”
Viktor Koen (MFA 1992 Illustration as Visual Essay), Rorschach, 2022, digital print on paper. On view at “Greetings from Pandemic Island.”
EVENTS
Monday, February 3, 7:00 – 8:00pm | Visiting Artist Lecture: Kon Trubkovich | 335 West 16th Street
BFA Fine Arts presents Moscow-born, New York City-based artist Kon Trubkovich, who investigates how personal and collective memories routinely contradict one another, their inherent divergence complicating ideas of “truthful” documentation. Drawing on recorded history and the story of his family’s 1990 emigration from the USSR to the United States, he marks time by emulating the visual distortion of degraded electronic media in paint.
MFA Fine Arts presents a talk with New York-based artist Melissa Joseph. Joseph’s work considers themes of memory, family history, and the politics of how we occupy spaces. She intentionally alludes to the labors of women, her experiences as a second-generation American, and the unique juxtapositions of diasporic life.
MA Curatorial Practice presents a talk with independent curator and lecturer Niels Van Tomme, who playfully navigates the limitless possibilities of curating with the institutional limits of curatorial labor, which, for him, define the creative and critical potential of curatorial practice. Transforming rigid notions of exhibition-making, these dynamics shape new territories that question—and sometimes even bend—the very structures that allow it to be. Van Tomme renders these concepts concrete by drawing upon projects he’s been involved in, discussing methodologies, strategies, situations, and crises to propose personal yet pragmatic approaches to curatorial (im)possibilities.
Thursday, February 6, 5:30 – 7:30pm | Joey Zeledón | 136 West 21st Street, 7th floor
MFA Products of Design presents a talk with Joey Zeledón, an award-winning designer with nearly two decades of experience working with top industry names like HP, Steelcase, Smart Design, Continuum, and Clarks. Their work, from everyday items to thoughtfully reimagined furniture, blends emotional depth with practicality, always with an eye on comfort and connection. They’re also the author of the Print op-ed “Design is Trans” and Touchy/Feely, which explores the idea of emotional ergonomics, reminding us that design isn’t just about how something looks or works but about how it feels.
BFA Visual and Critical Studies and the SVA Honors Program presents a talk with cultural theorist and University of Chicago professor Malynne Sternstein that weaves Czech surrealism into the urgency of Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project.
MFA Fine Arts presents a talk by artist Mary Mattingly. Mattingly’s work, which is often public and collaborative, is driven by a commitment to co-building ecological systems that provide access to water, food, and shelter during the climate crisis. She builds sculptural ecosystems prioritizing access to food, shelter, and clean water, as well as maps and photographs of the supply chains of her photographic tools. In 2016, supported by a large community, Mattingly led Swale, a floating food forest in New York’s harbor, providing public access to foraging perennial plants and challenging the city’s ban on public land harvesting. This initiative led to NYC Parks’ first edible park, the Foodway in the Bronx, in 2017. In 2021, in collaboration with +MoreArt and watershed communities, Mattingly launched the Public Water campaign, spotlighting New York City’s drinking watershed and disparities in clean water access, particularly for those living within the watershed.
MARS, 2024, installation documentation, dimensions variable. On view at “Inhabited By.”
MARS, 2024, installation documentation, dimensions variable. On view at “Inhabited By.”
MPS Digital Photography presents a talk with Dustin Pittman (1974 Film and Video), fashion photographer, filmmaker, social historian, and activist as part of the i3: Images, Ideas, Inspiration lecture series. Pittman was not just an observer but was an active participant in the places and events that shaped pop culture—at Andy Warhol’s Factory, the women’s liberation movements of the 1970s, the VIP room at Studio 54, and the nascent punk scene at CBGB and The Mudd Club. He is an active participant in ACT UP and a veteran of the Gay Liberation Front movement and Women’s Rights movement. His work has been at the forefront of genderqueer visual politics and challenges stereotypes and gender, sexual, and racial preconceptions. Dustin has celebrated the broad spectrum of identities and experiences across the LGBTQIA+ community and recognizes the oath-making spirit of its culture.
Tuesday, February 18, 3:00 – 5:00pm | Letha Wilson | 133/141 West 21st Street, Room 101C, and online
MFA Fine Arts presents a talk with Hawaiian-born, Colorado-raised artist Letha Wilson. Wilson attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2009. Her artwork has been shown at many venues, including Mass MoCA, deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Bronx Museum of the Arts, The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Columbus Museum of Art, Art in General, Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, and International Center for Photography.
Wednesday, February 19, 9:00 – 10:00am | The Curatorial Roundtable: Henk Slager (Utrecht) | Online
MA Curatorial Practice presents a talk with Henk Slager, who will discuss the question of the specificity of the research exhibition as a curatorial format, drawing from several recent projects, such as the Research Pavilion in Venice (2019) and the 9th Bucharest Biennale (2020–21), as well as the upcoming Asia Triennial Manchester (2025). As a professor of artistic research (Finnish Academy of Fine Art 2010–15) and as dean of MaHKU Utrecht, Henk Slager has made significant contributions to the debate on the role of research in visual art.
MFA Fine Arts presents a talk by Romi Crawford, PhD. Crawford’s research practice explores areas of race and ethnicity as they relate to American visual culture (including art, film, and photography). Her work often centers on and expands the bounds of Black Arts Movement ideas and aesthetics and positions pedagogical activities embedded in art practices.
MPS Digital Photography presents a talk with photographer, editor, and educator Jeffery Henson Scales, part of the i3: Images, Ideas, Inspiration lecture series. Scales’s photographs have been exhibited at museums throughout the United States and Europe and have appeared in numerous photography magazines, books, and anthologies, as well as in many permanent collections. Along with being an independent photographer, he is an NYU adjunct professor of photojournalism and an award-winning New York Times photography editor who has been co-editor of the annual Year in Pictures special section for over 15 years.
Wednesday, February 26, 9:00 – 10:00am | The Curatorial Roundtable: Lisa Long (Berlin) | Online
MA Curatorial Practice presents a talk with Lisa Long, a curator who specializes in contemporary and time-based art.