School of Visual Arts (SVA) presents “Social,” an exhibition of drawings, photography and video by current students and recent alumni featuring works that critique contemporary culture. Curated by Richard Brooks, assistant director of student galleries, the exhibition will be on view July 7 - August 11 at the Visual Arts Gallery, 601 West 26 Street, 15th floor, New York City.

Rob Campbell’s large graphite drawings on paper address social issues such as homelessness and police brutality. Arsenal 2 features a shopping cart overstuffed with salvaged cardboard boxes and bags. In Rodney King, meticulously rendered headless figures are isolated on a white background to emphasize the attackers and their fleeing victim. Campbell is a student in the MFA Fine Arts Department.

Drawing on the early work of Robert Frank, Azhar Chougle’s black and white photographs capture ironic and humorous aspects of the American landscape seen from a foreigner’s perspective. In his minimal, precisely balanced compositions, the artist slyly transforms a simple landscape fence into an immigration border and a view of the Washington Monument into a nuclear silo. Chougle is a recent graduate of the BFA Photography Department.

In her photographic project Abandonment, Christina Mallozzi documents a long neglected psychiatric hospital. The artist includes footage from a staff training film along with black and white photographs of the institution’s interiors in an attempt to remember the individuals that once lived there. Mallozzi is a student in the BFA Photography Department.

Constructed with large and small cardboard animal cutouts and whimsical Calderesque sculptures, Hunter Speagle’s installation, Come Down, I’m in the Basement, blends graffiti art with Abstract Expressionist painting. Using a vibrant palette and vigorous brushwork, the artist presents alligators, dogs and gigantic mouths with oversized teeth that engage viewers with direct rawness and energy. Speagle is a graduate of the MFA Fine Arts Department.

Jamie Sneider’s video, Art My Dad Told Me To Make, portrays the frustrating process of attempting to create art by following her father’s advice. On a split screen, viewers witness a Skype call during which the artist and her father heatedly debate the merits of self-expression and art for art’s sake versus the need for art market success. Sneider is a student in the MFA Fine Arts Department.

Exhibition

Social

SVA Chelsea Gallery