November 28, 2016–February 4, 2017
Reception: Thursday, December 8, 6–8pm
School of Visual Arts (SVA)
Chelsea Gallery
601 West 26th Street
15th floor
New York City
Hours: Monday–Saturday 10am–6pm
T 212 592 2145
The School of Visual Arts presents SVA x Skowhegan, an interdisciplinary exhibition that explores the effects an increasingly global society has on contemporary artistic practice. The show, curated by Lauren Haynes, curator, contemporary art at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, brings together Negar Ahkami, Sharona Eliassaf, Alejandro Guzman, Ulrike Heydenreich, Saskia Jordá, Thomas Lanigan-Schmidt, Gregg Louis, Dave McKenzie, Miryana Todorova, Marvin Touré and Fred Wilson, 11 artists who have never been shown together and whose work touches on identity and the mapping of various geographies and landscapes, both real and imagined.
On view at SVA Chelsea Gallery from November 28, 2016, through February 4, 2017, the exhibition’s title reflects the dual relationship the featured artists have with each institution. All are either SVA MFA Fine Arts alumni or faculty who have equally benefitted from the prestigious summer residency program at the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture in Madison, Maine.
The artists in SVA x Skowhegan work in a wide variety of media—including video, painting, drawing, performance and multimedia installation—to present different perspectives on the relationship between place, experience and artistic process. Saskia Jordá uses craft materials to weave symbolic paths between constructed borders, while Negar Ahkami and Ulrike Heydenreich create real and fictional landscapes via painting and drawing. In his site-specific installation, bruh where ya mind at (2016), Marvin Touré maps the psychological effects of the American condition on the minds of young black men, while Thomas Lanigan-Schmidt employs aluminum, garland and glitter to illustrate how a blended neighborhood and traditional Catholic church affected the movements of an adolescent gay kid in 1950’s New Jersey. Waving visitors into the gallery are four works from Fred Wilson’s series of painted flags from African diasporan nations that, stripped of all color, celebrate and ponder their symbolism and glory. Along with Sharona Eliassaf, Alejandro Guzman, Gregg Louis, Dave McKenzie and Miryana Todorova, these artists create works that evidence their past, present, future, actual, devised and fabricated migratory movements, offering up poignant representations of global citizenship.
SVA x Skowhegan will also include a fully illustrated publication, with entries on each artist and an essay by the curator, to be released on January 17, 2017. Visit sva.edu/sva-x-skowhegan for more information.
The SVA Chelsea Gallery, located at 601 West 26th Street between 11th and 12th Avenues, is open Monday through Saturday, 10am to 6pm. Admission is free. The gallery is accessible by wheelchair.
About SVA’s MFA Fine Arts
SVA’s MFA Fine Arts program reflects the diversity of New York’s many art worlds. Together, the faculty and students form a community of established and emerging artists from many backgrounds who work across disciplines and modes of practice. The program’s main goals are to provide a stimulating and supportive environment in which students can thrive and develop as artists, to foster rigorous critical engagement with contemporary art and other cultural forms, and to produce an ongoing conversation, through work as much as through words, about what we make, how we make it and why.
SVA’s MFA Fine Arts program attracts ambitious emerging artists from many countries and backgrounds. In their commitment to art, and to one another, they provide a foundation for artistic growth that extends beyond graduation and forms an ongoing platform of professional support.
Prospective applicants are encouraged to visit the MFA Fine Arts website at mfafinearts.sva.edu and to call or visit the department prior to applying. To arrange a visit, please email [email protected] or call T +1 212 592 2501.
