curated by Zoé Samudzi
June 4–23, 2025
55 Bethune Street
10014 New York NY
Hours: noon–6pm
Featuring work by Sophia-Yemisi Adeyemo, Ian Byers-Gamber, Francisco echo Eraso, Harley Hollenstein, Quinn Isaacs, Dan Lucal, Saba N. Maheen, John de Leon Martin, Ariana Martinez, Emily Drew Miller, Rachel Mulvihill, Pachi, JaLeel Marques Porcha, Natalie Romero, Alisa Sikelianos-Carter, Johnathan Allen Wilborn, Feyaz Yusuff
How might we conceive of the role of the artist, particularly in times of crisis? Can we, in seriousness, claim the aesthetic ought to not be troubled by the political? Is the aspiration or demand to remain untroubled by the weight of the work of art simply an irresponsible desire?
Following the Trace, the exhibition of seventeen artists newly emerging from the Rutgers MFA program, attends to the ambivalences contained within these questions and their perpetually unresolved answers. Varying in form and affective orientation, the artists individually and collectively contend with internal and external experience, political events, infrastructural critiques, and natural phenomena as ethical-aesthetic reflections of the world around them.
If we understand aesthetic production—the painting, the photograph, the sculpture, the performance, the video—as amalgams and distillations of social-cultural and material forces, then the work of art is a genealogy. Extending a multi-directional referential constellation into the past, present, and future, the work of art becomes a projection: a communicative site through which artist and audience negotiate meaning, history, and desire.
The artist is equally excavator and creator: replying to the ghostly haunting, recalling the reverberant echo, formulating the fabulation. The back-and-forth undulation of the tide guides a multivalency of significance and interpretation, revealing the dreamscapes and ways of being in the world that the work of art offers as existential possibility.
Inquiries: Rich Siggillino, Gallery Coordinator, res241@mgsa.rutgers.edu.
About the department: The Department of Art & Design at Rutgers University's Mason Gross School of the Arts seeks to cultivate a diverse community that values visual literacy, critical dialogue, experimentation, and the skills necessary for sustaining a creative life as artists and designers. Central to its vision is engaging in interdisciplinary research and embarking on collaborations within Rutgers and beyond, leaving an imprint on the global arenas of contemporary art and design. Studio arts training is offered in design, drawing, media, painting, photography, print, and sculpture. The department offers five degree programs: a bachelor of arts, a bachelor of fine arts in both visual arts and design, and a master of fine arts in both visual arts and design, as well as a minor in art. Mason Gross Galleries, a 4,200-square-foot space, showcases up to ten student exhibitions per year—all free and open to the public.
