Idrissa Sidibe, Sleepy Charles, 2021, pigmented inkjet print. From “Mentors.”
The earliest signs of spring are upon us, which means it is the perfect time to stroll over to the SVA Flatiron Project Space for a bushel of new work by alumni, faculty and students, all viewable from the sidewalk this month.
In addition to these exhibitions—and a slate of virtual lectures from renowned international and national photographers, prominent gallery curators, leading art therapists and esteemed fine artists—March will see the beginning of SVA Shows, the College’s annual spring series of end-of-year student work. Kicking things off on Monday, March 8, is “Mentors,” the nearly 30-year tradition from BFA Photography, and Video that pairs graduating students with established industry professionals to help guide their work. Read on for more on the March 2021 events at SVA, and stay safe and healthy!
Nadia Sablin, Katya at Sixteen, Alekhovshchina, Russia, 2016. Part of the MPS Digital Photography i3: Images, Ideas, Inspiration lecture series.
VIRTUAL EVENTS
Tuesday, March 9, 7:00 – 8:30pm ET | Nadia Sablin
Join a talk with photographer Nadia Sablin, whose projects are primarily based in rural Russia and Ukraine, spanning years of children growing up, elders growing old and the practical ways in which people cope with the passage of time in an unstable economic environment, presented as part of the MPS Digital Photography i3: Images, Ideas, Inspiration lecture series. Skirting the line between documentary and fictional storytelling, Nadia Sablin’s projects explore the larger world through close personal narratives.
Tuesday, March 16, 6:30 – 8:30pm ET | A Night of Photographic Theatre: Mark Peterson and Political Chaos
Join photographer Mark Peterson for a virtual lecture about his work. Photographer Charles Traub, chair of MFA Photography, Video and Related Media, will talk with Peterson about his methodology and intentions. Peterson is one of the most active and published photographers in the current editorial scene. He is regularly published in The New York Times Magazine, New York and The New Yorker and his work consists of the depiction of political figures and people of wealth and notoriety; but, more importantly, he captures the drama of political moments in our ever-delirious times.
Join Storefront for Art and Architecture director and chief curator José Esparza Chong Cuy for a conversation with Asad Raza, an artist who has curated exhibitions in his own apartment, and more recently created HOME COOKING—a digital artist-run space that features activities, movement, music, poetry, video, and more—as a way of presenting new work within a coronavirus reality. Presented by MA Curatorial Practice.
In this talk presented by MPS Art Therapy, art therapist Ann Ellen Goodstein (MPS 2013 Art Therapy) looks at unique ways the practice works to engage acute psychiatry patients in treatment during their admissions on locked, inpatient psychiatric units, viewed through memorable case histories from Bellevue Hospital.
Tuesday, March 23, 7:00 – 8:30pm ET | Adam Magyar
Join a talk with Berlin-based Hungarian photographer and video artist Adam Magyar, presented as part of the MPS Digital Photography i3: Images, Ideas, Inspiration lecture series. Magyar is captivated by high-tech cities, and his process is a symbiosis between technology and creative instinct. Magyar is best known for his series “Urban Flow,” in which he uses homemade slit scan technology and self-developed computer programs to photograph the endless stream of pedestrian traffic in the busiest intersections in the world.
Thursday, March 25, 7:00 – 8:00pm | Judith Linhares
Join BFA Fine Arts for a Visiting Artist Lecture with artist Judith Linhares in conversation with writer Jennifer Samet. Rooted in the California Bay Area Counterculture of the 1960s and ’70s, Linhares combines abstract expressionism with Bay Area figuration to create uniquely irradiant paintings. Her work is held in the permanent collections of the de Young Museum, San Francisco; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, among others.
La Latina Artista, Connecting, 2021, digital image. From “Alone & Not Alone.”
VIRTUAL EXHIBITIONS
Through Saturday, March 13 | Alone & Not Alone
An exhibition of multimedia artworks by MPS Art Therapy students and the people they work with at their internship sites, curated by Liz DelliCarpini, department internship coordinator and adjunct faculty member. During these challenging times of being “alone and not alone,” the artists seek to center the lived experience of people who confront social oppression and create restorative relationships in virtual and in-person spaces. Your involvement is viewed as a key aspect of community-based art therapy practice: creating opportunities for people to contribute, gain recognition and receive social support within our collective community. The therapeutic goals of “Alone & Not Alone” are to bring us together in ways that acknowledge and respect our differences.
Through Monday, March 15 | Concurrence
“Concurrence” features work by nine SVA students seeking ways to articulate their experience of identity, conquering challenges and healing through self-expression. These works survey the courage, sorrow, humor and perseverance of diverse cultures, with practices incorporating sculpture, painting and photography. The exhibited pieces reflect the variety in these forms: a series of photographs searching for the light behind the hardships of contemporary Venezuelan life; an interactive installation of stones engraved with suicide notes reflecting on the experience of older people living alone in China; a series of sculptures using wood, bullet shells, screws and found objects to explore the complex histories of Black identity. These artists open up dialogues and that have much to say, not only to their specific milieus but for future possibilities of a global society.
BFA Visual & Critical Studies and the SVA Flatiron Project Space present this installation of large-scale paper works by visual artist and BFA Fine Arts faculty member Nils Karsten (BFA 1999 Fine Arts), viewable from the sidewalk. The exhibition presents a selection of images—and the woodblock itself for one of these works—based on influential albums of the late 20th century. Karsten’s work can be found in numerous private collections and public collections, including the Brooklyn Museum, New York; Mint Museum, Charlotte, North Carolina; Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, North Carolina; and the Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts, Taipei.
Through Tuesday, March 23 | Portrait Show | SVA Flatiron Project Space, 133/141 West 21st Street
An exhibition of coursework by SVA students presented by Fine Arts – Foundation, this exhibition can be viewed from outside the SVA Flatiron Gallery Windows.
Through Monday, May 3 | The Still Small Voice of ???: Recent work by Pete Franzen
A virtual exhibition of recent paintings by Pete Franzen (BFA 2013 Visual & Critical Studies). Of his work, Franzen says, “My pictures express my own fantasies (fears and desires) related to my life and our shared world. I use images relating to pleasure, friendship, sexuality and compassion, as well as masculinity, power, nihilism, apocalypse, fear and humiliation. For me, the pictures have hidden orders that tell multiple, co-existing stories all at once. Cruelty and suffering are depicted alongside symbols that represent, for me, the determination for uncompromising embrace of our common humanity.”
Monday, March 8 – Sunday, March 28 | Mentors
An exhibition of work by BFA Photography and Video students inspired by their working relationships with world-renowned artists, curators, editors and directors from our global arts community. Organized by department chair Joseph Maida, the Mentors program at SVA is designed to cultivate relationships between established and emerging artists and to introduce new talent to the broader community. Drawn from the ranks of the industry’s best-known photographers, curators, art directors, publishers, art dealers, critics and writers, this year’s mentors include Jennifer Blessing, senior curator of photography at the Guggenheim Museum, and Jessica Dimson, deputy director of photography ofThe New York Times Magazine, among many others.
Tuesday, March 23 – Monday, April 12 |Tissue Memory
A juried exhibition of multidisciplinary works by SVA students.
Two consecutive exhibitions of work by select fourth-year BFA Visual & Critical Studies students, curated by faculty member Suzanne Joelson. Part 1 will be on view Thursday, March 25 – Thursday, April 15, and Part 2 will be on view Thursday, April 22 – Wednesday, May 12, from the sidewalk outside the space. The first installation will pair Juliet Nelson and Naomi Treistman in real space, with Jay Park’s work on the monitor, and concern plants, roots and rhizome—in form and content, as material, as method and as a metaphor for the tangle.
Friday, March 26 – Monday, April 12 | Anatomical and Foundation Drawings
A two-part exhibition of anatomical and foundation drawings by BFA Fine Arts students of Andrew Gerndt.
Xiaohan Zhou, I Am So Nervous, 2020, digital. From “Concurrence.”