Exhibition

School of Visual Arts presents “Boundaries,” an exhibition of works by students and recent alumni exploring a diverse range of subjects, including identity and our relationship to urban environments. Curated by Richard Brooks, assistant director of SVA Galleries, the exhibition will be on view Friday, July 11, through Wednesday, July 30, at the SVA Gramercy Gallery, 209 East 23rd Street, New York City.

BFA Photography student Keren Greenberg employs the 19th-century salted print process to produce delicate and exquisitely subtle tones. Her photographic collection of birdcages is presented in a large grid of 36 prints. Here, images found online are deliberately paired with the historical photographic technique to serve as a metaphor for the centuries-old oppression of women that still continues in contemporary society.

MFA Fine Arts student Katy Halfin’s mixed-media sculptures combine fabric, found furniture and construction materials into carefully balanced assemblages that reflect the artist’s Russian background. In My Address Not a House or a Street, the artist juxtaposes a doorknob, pipe insulation, aluminum foil and fabric into a simple yet highly resolved composition of verticals and horizontals that conveys warmth and intimacy. 

Trained in traditional figure painting, MFA Fine Arts student Hyunho Kim expands the picture plane into three dimensions in his whimsical and larger-than-life black-and-white self portraits. Through careful attention to scale and proportion, the artist achieves a successful compositional balance. In a wry commentary on the creative process, Untitled 1 depicts Kim as an upside down, falling figure with legs splayed and head seemingly lost in a bundle of crumpled canvas on the floor. 

MPS Digital Photography student Lacy Kiernan’s photographs explore the constant transformation and growth of New York City. Using grids found in urban architecture as a primary compositional element, the artist’s prints reflect the layering, geometry and ever-changing juxtapositions that the city offers to attentive observers. 

MFA Photography, Video and Related Media student June Korea presents a series of elaborate photographic environments populated with his childhood dolls. These “sets” are meticulously detailed constructions that offer enigmatic backgrounds to imagined narratives. Describing his prints, the artist states, “My hope is that this work will serve as a catalyst to help viewers remember what they’ve once believed in and lost.”

Harshad Marathe (MFA 2014 Illustration as Visual Essay) exhibits a series of color prints illustrating key events and personalities from the Chitpavan Konkanastha Brahmin community of western India. His work traces the myths and history of this minority community’s origin, its meteoric rise and fall from power in medieval times and the role it played in India’s struggle for independence. 

In a collaborative effort, BFA Interior Design students Danielle Kachler, Dina Reziapova and Fatima Jeghir present the Tangram Table, based on the Chinese puzzle of the same name. The artists created a modular, multifunctional wooden tabletop with table settings and artificial food arranged in the form of a puzzle to encourage diners to interact with their food and more deeply appreciate their dining experience.

BFA Design student Yijun Zhu’s Dynamic Logo extends the boundaries of graphic design to video. Starting with simple grey dots on a white background, the artist uses a computer program to draw randomly intersecting lines through the dots each second, continually creating new forms. Throughout the video, the logo mutates endlessly in an infinite number of variations while always maintaining its essential vocabulary.