2016 First-Year MFA Exhibition
March 26–April 9, 2016
First-year Visual Arts MFA students present new work at the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery. Curated by Amanda Parmer, independent writer, artist and curator living in New York.
Artists
Michal Alpern, Dana Buhl, Lucy Lord Campana, Andrew Cannon, Nash Glynn, Maggie Goldstone, Allison Janae Hamilton, Taylor Ashby Hawkins, Duy Hoàng, Iris Yirei Hu, TJ Hwang, Kim Junsung, Joeun Aatchim, Peter LaBier, Alex Mctigue, Cy Morgan, Rocío Olivares, Jenna Pietrobon, Adam Liam Rose, Emily Ludwig Shaffer, Sara Stern, Dylan Vandenhoeck, Kristin Walsh, Derick Whitson, Bryan McGovern Wilson, Zou Zhao (Xi Xi), José Delgado Zúñiga.
Events
...then we know that it is really a door: On Endurance and Futurity
Thursday, March 31, 7pm
Location: Stronach Center & Wallach Art Gallery
Schermerhorn Hall, 8th Fl.
…then we know that it is really a door: On Endurance and Futurity will account for aesthetic, conceptual, and formal relationships between the twenty seven projects represented in the first year MFA exhibition. In dialog with artists Kambui Olujimi and Aki Sasamoto as well as art historians and curators Rujeko Hockley and Natasha Marie Llorens we will take up the personal and cultural roots of these practices and think through possible readings and effects of the work moving ahead. Drawing out a dynamic constellation of terms and associations to ground these practices in the present we will discuss the social, cultural and affective aspects of these projects with an eye to the future. Moderated by exhibition curator, Amanda Parmer.
*Followed by a viewing and reception, the Wallach gallery will be open for the event starting at 6pm for those who want an advance viewing
Rujeko Hockley is Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art at the Brooklyn Museum. She joined the Museum in 2012 and has since worked on exhibitions including LaToya Ruby Frazier: A Haunted Capital (2013), The Bruce High Quality Foundation: Ode to Joy, 2001-2013 (2013), Unfolding Tales: Selections from the Collection (2013, 2014) (Co-curator), Crossing Brooklyn: Art from Bushwick, Bed-Stuy, and Beyond (2014) (Co-curator), Kehinde Wiley: A New Republic (2015), I See Myself in You: Selections from the Collection (2015) (Co-curator), and Kara Walker: African Boy Attendant Curio (Bananas) (2015) (Curator). She serves on the Board of Art Matters, as well as the Advisory Board of Recess. She received her B.A. from Columbia University in Art History and is a Ph.D. Candidate in Art History, Theory, and Criticism in the Visual Arts Department at the University of California, San Diego.
Natasha Marie Llorens is an independent curator and writer based in New York. Her curatorial research is very broadly focused, ranging from photography and social practice to the feminist politics of abstraction in emerging contemporary art. Recent projects include "Vois-tu pas que je brûle? (Do you not see...)" at the Essex Street Market with Artists Alliance and "Threshing Floors," at Cuchifritos Gallery. She is a graduate of the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College and a Ph.D. candidate in art history at Columbia University. Her academic research is focused on violence and representation in Algerian national cinema from the period immediately post independence.
Born and raised in Bedford Stuyvesant Brooklyn, Kambui Olujimi received his BFA from Parsons School of Design, NY and MFA from Columbia University, NY. He has had solo exhibitions at the MIT List Visual Arts Center, MA; apexart, NY; and Art in General, NY. His works have premiered nationally at The Sundance Film Festival, Park City, Utah; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Studio Museum in Harlem, NY and the Museum of Modern Art, NY. Internationally he has exhibited at The Jim Thompson Art Center, Bangkok, Thailand; Museo Nacional Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain; Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki, Finland and Para Site, Hong Kong. Olujimi has been awarded residencies from Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, ME, apexart, NY, The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, NY, and Civitella Ranieri, Italy, and Fountainhead, FL, among others. He has received grants and fellowships from A Blade of Grass, The Jerome Foundation, and The Fine Art Work Center in Provincetown, MA. Numerous periodicals, newspapers and journals have written about Olujimi work including The New Yorker, Art Forum, Art in America, Brooklyn Rail, The New York Times and Modern Painters.
Aki Sasamoto works in sculpture, performance, dance, and whatever medium that takes to get her ideas across. In her installation/performance works, Aki moves and talks inside the careful arrangements of sculpturally altered objects, activating bizarre emotions behind daily life. Her works appear in gallery spaces, theater spaces, as well as in odd sites. Shown at the Kitchen, High Line, Chocolate Factory Theater, Soloway, Whitney Biennial 2010, Greater New York 2010, New York; Mori Museum, Take Ninagawa, Yokohama Triennale 2008, Japan; Gwangju Biennial 2012, South Korea; and numerous other international and domestic venues. She has collaborated with visual artists, musicians, choreographers, mathematicians, and scholars.