20/20 (2022)

Cautious Optimism

The strange energy of 2022 was strikingly man ifest in the work by the School of Visual Arts’s graduating class. The world is probably still ending, as climate disasters continue to chip away at the planet, but the apocalypse feels a little slower—or at least, a little less acute and depressing— than it did a year or two ago, before vaccines. This new apocalyptic temporality is reflected in the students’ work. For the past decade or so, a lot of the work I’ve seen in art schools has been intent on raising aware ness, visualizing injustices, highlighting marginalized histories and voices, and exposing or responding to the umpteen horrors of the world we live in. This year, though, emerging from many months of isolation, I felt this palpable, tacit assumption that everyone already knows the end is nigh.

So how are artists responding now? At this point, we’re all pretty aware of atrocities, we’ve also grown rather weary. In the graduates’ work, I found time and again that this awareness didn’t dead end in nihil ism—after all, they kept making during difficult, unprecedented times. Nor, generally speaking, did the students wholly sidestep their very warranted frustra tions. Walking through the displays on campus, I found myself with the sense that, for many students, art became this special, even therapeutic space—not one wholly set apart from the context in which it was made, but running alongside it, at a different kind of tempo. For some of the artists, art struck me as providing an opportunity to experience, create, and appreciate those small miracles that keep us all going. I saw this in work by Grace Zhang, who gives us a glimpse of the wonder and awe that mushrooms can inspire in the

face of death and decay. The artist replicated several fungal species to scale in felt, then displayed them in a wunderkammer-like case, inviting viewers to behold them with a sort of playful yet rigorous curiosity. The care with which the mushrooms were made suggested, to me, some reverence for the fungal kingdom. Chris Cortez’s paintings, meanwhile, celebrate a community. The artist’s Latinx figures—rendered skillfully in rich, bright colors—often exude a transcendent kind of joy, even when they are posed in compositions borrowed from historical tableaux. Both artists were carving space to enjoy and appreciate the things that make life good, which, right about now, we badly need.

The energy I felt visiting the campus—which I keep wanting to call a “cautious optimism,” even though “optimism” is too strong, or too future-oriented, of a word—brought me back to my first museum visit after the lockdowns. In anticipation, I had set my expecta tions way too high. I’d been feeling wholly depleted and undernourished—you probably were too—and for some reason, I convinced myself that seeing art would be a quick fix. I craved one of those punch-you-in-the-gut, take-you-to-a-higher-place feelings of awe. I’d forgot ten that, most often, art is a slow burn—many of the best works of art are the ones that surprise you, but then stick with you, reminding you to look at the familiar a little differently when you think about the things they showed you later on. Rather than grandiose aims or total transcendence, many of the works I saw seem fixated on small wonders.

I got the sense from some of the work on view that the process of making—be it tactical, repetitive, or playful—offered its makers some therapeutic benefits

as well. Perhaps I’m projecting, but surely, some en gagement with the material world, and some cathartic processes, were required during the four unprece dented years in which these students attended the School of Visual Arts. Obsessive repetitions and itera tions met playful colors in David Kim’s installations, for instance—his seemed like the kind of project you could lose yourself in. Chenxi Li committed herself to a meticulously detailed arrangement of mirror, which she broke into shards and arranged in a vertical line that wrapped around corners. The process seemed satisfying and focused. I also imagined how easily Abhika Pahwa got lost in the intricate patterns she created and repeated in an installation and 2D works that felt wholly cathartic. And Zhexing Shang was clearly dedicated to honing his vision and technique, sharpening a style that allowed him to create a world of his own—one that remains strikingly consistent across compositions. When making art is a passion, a refuge, or even a compulsion, these sorts of visions often translate to the work—the energy seeps out of the work and pulls viewers in.

Over the past few months, I’ve been thinking a lot about something Maggie Nelson wrote in her most recent book, On Freedom: Four Songs of Care and Restraint. In the book, Nelson reflects back on her treatise The Art of Cruelty, which concerned represen tations of violence in art, and observes that the art of this century marks a turn away from cruelty and toward care. In that passage, she refers to an Artforum article written by Helen Molesworth, in which the curator observes the emergence a new aesthetics of healing and care in contemporary art—one she

accredits to the Black Lives Matter movement. Some examples Molesworth gives include Simone Leigh’s therapeutic and clinic-oriented works from 2014 and 2016, as well as Lauren Halsey’s “Kingdom Splurge (4),” an immersive funk fest she installed at Recess in Brooklyn in 2016. There is a sense, Nelson observes, that for some time, we all have been trying to work through some sort of collective trauma, “which came to its culmination in the pandemic trauma.” She writes that we are just beginning to touch this trauma’s contours and figure out methods of collective healing or care. She says that perhaps, art might have a role to play in a kind of collective therapy—not by sweeping harsh realities under the rug, but by providing a space for thoughtful, reflective, and emotionally intelligent ways to process the feelings we share. I felt this to be especially true in my visit to SVA, yet I also left the cam pus with the sense that this was just the beginning, and grew very excited for what this next generation of artists will show us soon.

—Emily Watlington, Associate Editor, Art in America, Curator, 20/20 catalog

Curator’s Choices

Yiran

Yiran

Raul

Yiran Zhang

A Family Recipe: Pancake

2021 • Silkscreeen on pancake with ketchup Dimensions variable Image courtesy of Gustavo Murillo Fernandez-Valdes

"Love"(Repairing

courtesy of Gustavo Murillo Fernandez-Valdes

Fish Knows

variable

courtesy of Raul Valverde

Fish Knows 2022

Machine learning, gold fish

Dimensions variable

Image courtesy of Raul Valverde

Sining

Raul Valverde

Another

Image courtesy of Raul Valverde

Raul Valverde

Sining

Raul Valverde

Raul Valverde

Raul

Raul Valverde

of Raul Valverde

Inmaculada

Raul Valverde

Enamorados

courtesy of Raul Valverde

Raul

Raul Valverde

of Raul Valverde

Installation view • 2022 Image courtesy of Raul Valverde

Gustavo Murillo Fernandez-Valdes

Gustavo Murillo Fernandez-Valdes

Raul Valverde

of Raul Valverde

Local Guide (Blanket)

courtesy of Raul Valverde

of Gustavo Murillo Fernandez-Valdes

courtesy of Gustavo Murillo Fernandez-Valdes

courtesy of Raul Valverde

of Raul Valverde

of Raul Valverde

Raul Valverde

Sefa

Raul

courtesy of Raul Valverde

Raul

Sofra (Dinner Table)

courtesy of Raul Valverde

Sofra (Dinner Table)

courtesy of Raul Valverde

Gustavo Murillo Fernandez-Valdes

Raul Valverde

Raul Valverde

Organza

Gustavo Murillo Fernandez-Valdes

and Jodha

courtesy of Gustavo Murillo Fernandez-Valdes

Installation view • 2022 Image courtesy of Gustavo Murillo Fernandez-Valdes

Installation view 2021 • Image courtesy of Gustavo Murillo Fernandez-Valdes

Zhexing

Raul Valverde

Zhexing

Zhexing

Raul Valverde

Miley

Raul Valverde

Miley

Raul Valverde

Image courtesy of Raul Valverde

Miley

courtesy of Raul Valverde

courtesy of Raul Valverde

courtesy of Raul Valverde

(Dildo Modules)

2021-2022

spray paint

Image courtesy of Raul Valverde

Untitled (Dildo Modules)

paint,

courtesy of Raul Valverde

Untitled (Dildo Modules)

of Raul Valverde

Untitled (Dildo Modules)

spray paint, silicon, resin

Image courtesy of Raul Valverde

Raul Valverde

of Raul Valverde

of Raul Valverde

Raul Valverde

Raul Valverde

tobacco, decorative paper, cardboard, gold

courtesy of Raul Valverde

courtesy of Raul Valverde

Raul Valverde

view

Image courtesy of Raul Valverde

Raul

of Raul Valverde

Raul Valverde

Curator’s Choices

Yiran Zhang

Chong Xu

Sining Zhu

Rosina Sun

Chris Cortez

Symia McKellar

Allison Prezioso

Iris Hardy

Chris Nowak

Anna Kim

Sefa Ozdogan

Grace Zhang

Abhika Pahwa

Zhexing Shang

Miley Huang

David Kim

Chenxi Li

Allen Wei

Bryan Fernandez

Feng

BFA Fine Arts

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From figure studies to cutting-edge conceptual ap proaches, our department prepares the fine arts student to enter a myriad of professions and graduate programs. Courses in art history and contemporary art theory inform creative approaches to diverse aes thetic practices. In addition to traditional media, SVA offers experimental practices in digital sculpture and the emerging field of Bio Art The Fine Arts Department at the School of Visual Arts is unique. At SVA , the fine arts student can choose an individualized course of study. Our new Fine Arts Digital Lab hosts private workstations equipped with up-to-the-minute software and instruction. Our digital sculpture initiative boasts computer-driven cutting machines for fabricating sculpture. Painting classes include projects in direct observation or photo-based imagery as well as methods for producing abstract and narrative work. Our faculty consists of professional artists, critics and curators whose work has achieved both national and international recognition. In addition, the Fine Arts Department sponsors many events and field trips to museums, galleries and artists’ studios to prepare the student for professional-level experience in the arts. With Chelsea’s art scene at our back door, students stay tuned in to art history in the making.

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