Exhibition

Please note: Due to the evolving coronavirus situation, all SVA Galleries exhibitions and receptions have been suspended. Visit sva.edu/coronavirus for updates throughout this time.

School of Visual Arts (SVA) presents “red pulses,” an exhibition of multidisciplinary works by SVA students. Curated by MA Curatorial Practice fellow Adeola Olakiitan, the exhibition is on view from Saturday, March 7, through Saturday, April 4, at the SVA Flatiron Gallery, 133/141 West 21st Street, New York City.

red-pulse / noun [red-pulses as plural]

An object, idea or material freshly given form: The Grand Budapest Hotel gave the red-pulse that inspired his first film.

Meaning and thought, as their ontologies suggest, are products of a mental faculty. We feel but cannot touch them. Yet, despite the irony of their formlessness and the reliance on some medium or process to birth them to life, it can be argued that they hold their weight in their own reality. For the barefoot French philosopher Gaston Bachelard, imagination too, a variant of thought or meaning, sings a reality.

In “red pulses,” the exhibition site recontextualizes and makes tangible the interrelational creation of meaning: old and newer pulses brought alive through that which is inherent in the artwork, an organic one from the audience, or a merge of both. If as we consider the materiality of thought it, in turn, takes on more material form, the exhibition prods to this consideration by giving agency to the creative production of looking. Here, sculptural installations and images perform an orchestration of meaning-making. 

“red pulses” brings together a group of artists whose work primes a process of questioning and speculation for an outsider—a priming integral to and in concert with a network of variegated mental operations happening on site.

Artists include Robert G. Burch (BFA Design), +Play Studio (Juan David Figueroa) (MFA Computer Arts), Yan Jin (MFA Photography, Video and Related Media), Marcelina Pater (MFA Fine Arts), Claudia Shaldervan (BFA Photography and Video), and Alexander Si (MFA Fine Arts).

Juried exhibitions are a way for SVA students to recognize the achievements of their most distinguished classmates. Artists are selected from a large pool of applicants to the annual SVA Galleries call for entries, whose submissions undergo a rigorous examination of presented materials, including documentation of work and artist statements.