March 1 – March 480WSE GalleryCurator: Katie SvenssonArtists: Elsa Stern & Echo Yan Nature or Nurture? The long debated question may be more aptly considered today in the struggle to overcome internalized thoughts and behaviors— residues of previous generations—that no longer serve to benefit our ever expanding world. Both artists explore this terrain of the normative, the internalized truths that guide us through our daily lives and influence the meanings we derive from our experiences, through the corporeal; their insides come out to challenge our conception of the ‘obscene’, ‘proper’ behaviors, and our anthropocentric tendencies, all of which are intimately…

February 22 – February 2580WSE GalleryCurator: Lillian BeesonArtists: Chaewon Lim & Regina Escobedo Guerra Metropolitan spaces like New York are centers of cultural, social, and economic prowess and growth. Such cities allow people to explore some of the greatest aspects of modern life. But among all the hustle and bustle, the millions of individual people, and the plethora of possibilities for what to do and who to be, city life can become oppressively overwhelming. There are a multitude of ways to handle the strain of urban living, and disparate coping methods are utilized in different ways, as evidenced by Regina…

February 15 – February 1880WSE GalleryCurator: Meghan DoyleArtists: Talia Rudofsky & Elijah Chavez Notions of ‘home’ clutter the cultural discourse, ranging from The Odyssey’s inclusion on school syllabi, to corporations targeting the domestic consumer, to the classifications of artists into geographic categories. In a post-pandemic world, even the historically separate work sphere can now invade the home, amalgamating personal with professional. ‘Home’ is so frequently associated with safety, nurture, and rest that we colloquially refer to it as ‘the nest.’ But this enduring narrative of ‘home-as-comfort’ is incomplete. Where is the chapter in which home, for all its implied welcome,…

February 8 – February 1180WSE GalleryCurator: Nicasia SolanoArtists: Amanda Lindsay & Carlos Grajeda Deteriorating Time/Deteriorating Self explores the subjective nature of time, and ways in which the self deteriorates throughout the duration of life cycles. Conceptually inspired by global cultural engagements with death, this exhibition seeks to dispel notions of deterioration as synonymous with permanent loss and melancholia. While acknowledging the intangibility of time and ever-shifting essence of the self, the exhibition highlights work bringing form to these themes. Deteriorating Time/Deteriorating Self features the photographic, sculptural, and performance work of Amanda Lindsay and the paintings of Carlos Grajeda. Lindsay and Grajeda bring…

February 1 – February 480WSE GalleryCurator: Brea Patterson-WestArtists: Natalia Palacino & Ryann Coleman “Growth imagines its opposite is decay. As if to grow is to stay alive, and other delusions taught by capitalism. In reality, most of our lives are spent shrink- ing, eroding into bits and decaying. What if we celebrated that decay and championed the infinitesimal?” – Samantha Hunt, The Unwritten Book: An Investigation The processes of art making are in many ways similar to the processes necessary to sustain our human condition – to sustain the Earth on which we are necessarily grounded. Like the very beginnings…

February 10 – February 13Curator: Barbie KimArtists: Sarah Goldman & Nina Molloy

February 17 – February 20Curator: Eve SperlingArtists: Brock Riggins and Rhea Barve

February 24 – February 27Curator: Allison CareyArtists: Delia Pelli-Walbert & Kris Waymire

March 3 – March 6Curator: Madi ShenkArtists: Talia Deane & Ebony Joiner

Fragments are the traces left behind, waiting to be reimagined and remembered. This group exhibition brings together the work of Adrian Beyer, sofi cisneros, Dora Duan, Victor Li, Pricila Modesto, Rhiannon Thomas, and Xiaoli Zhou. Identities and memories are ingrained in this body of work, as the artists reconstruct their own fragmented realities. They play with medium, ideas, and sense of self, and in doing so reflect on the faultiness of their own memories and constructions. These works all investigate the sensation of the artist breaking their world apart.  Through different subjects, media, and locations, these seven artists all magnify…

March 3 – March 6Curator: Martina LentinoArtists: Derek Koffi-Ziter and Isabella Wang How do others’ perceptions influence the way we see ourselves? Through which channels do seemingly disparate thoughts connect, contributing to an inevitably multidimensional state of being? How does the practice of identity formation cope with constant self-reflection and self-criticism? In Independent Research: Perceived Selves artists Isabella Wang and Derek Koffi-Ziter think through these questions in multimedia works that act as explorations of their psyches and lived experiences. Independent Research functions as a snapshot of their respective practices, highlighting self-analysis, introspection, and pluralistic identity as shared conceptual underpinnings.  Isabella…

February 24 – February 27Curator: Chloë CourtneyArtists: Oona Bebout and Yinan (Rebecca) Chen The perceived boundary between our bodies and the outside world is fundamental to our understanding of selfhood. Vision mediates that experience of the body as a self-contained entity: our gaze emanatesoutward, fixing our bodies at the center of perceived reality. Similar to the way the Cartesian grid schematizes boundless space from a single origin point, one-point perspective creates a carefully orderedreality in which to see is to know, and to know completely. Touch, however, resists this visual hierarchy. Instead of emanating from one point on the human…

February 17 – February 20Curator: Leigh PetersonArtists: Les-lie López and Camila Rodriguez Jimenez Les-lie López and Camila Rodriguez Jimenez operate from a paradoxical position, as they find themselves both marginalized and thrust into the spotlight. Historically, the voices of the Mexican and Colombian communities to which they belong did not have priority in the United States. But due to shifting cultural values in recent years, interest in the experiences and perspectives of these groups is growing. As artists, Les-lie and Camila feel pressure to fulfill the role of spokesperson for their cultures. However, they do not desire to be pigeonholed…

Inside / OutsideFebruary 10 – February 13Curator: Janelle MiniterArtists: Naava Guaraca, Eleisha McCorkle, and Tonisha McCorkle Through their artistic practices Naava Guaraca, Eleisha McCorkle, and Tonisha McCorkle investigate their lived experiences through interior and exterior spaces. Hyperaware that most spaces are not inherently designed for Black and Brown women, each artist produces works that reclaim space and assert their agency.  Naava Guaraca locates herself in the world by seeking the familiar. Although a native New Yorker, Guaraca is deeply connected to her family’s hometown in Ecuador, where she returns often. As an inhabitant of public and private spaces in North…

March 10 – March 13Curator: Madeleine MorrisArtists: Giovanna Pedrinola and Shane Weiss Shane Weiss and Giovanna Pedrinola explore themes of the body as it exists in and interacts with surrounding and internal space. In Embodied Space, Weiss and Pedrinola consider the formal elements of medium, material and activation of the space around their works.  Rigid architectural geometry meets the organic suppleness of fabric in Pedrinola’s drawings and installations. Born in Brazil, Pedrinola utilizes her personal and artisticheritage in her works, which include drawing, sculpture, textile, and performance to engage with visual, auditory, and haptic sensation. In her drawing Un Ricordo…

March 11 – March 15, 2020 Curator: Andres Gonzalez Artists: Chanel Khoury, Christine JiMin Park The Life of Objects Chanel Khoury and Christine JiMin Park have been, until recently, engaged in refining the medium of paint. Their languages of painting bring abstraction and figuration into play. In some respects, they stand back to back at the center of this spectrum looking outwardly. Khoury paints perspectival environments that are often illogically constructed and open into a never-ending horizon. Park paints memories and their decay, pulling from childhood photographs. A philosophy student, Khoury’s paintings are in dialogue with a panpsychic perspective, which…

March 4 – March 8, 2020 Curator: Cindy Qian Artists: Mika Sarina Lee, Hannah Park   Beyond Objects  The exhibition explores the presentation and representation of ordinary things that usually do not get a second look. Mika Sarina Lee and Hannah Park manipulate common materials usually used in interiors and construction sites, and combine them with conventional artistic media in their works. Incorporating materials such as glass, paper, stone, bolts, hooks, nails, furniture fragments, and more, the artists deconstruct found objects and endow them with new meanings through the manipulation of their materiality and placement.   Inspired by Marcel Duchamp’s use of…

February 26 – March 1, 2020 Curator: Katie Maher Artists: Martine Velasco, Andy (Yuheng) Wang  Tracing History Through Myth From a technical and stylistic perspective, Martine Velasco and Andy Wang’s practices could not be more distinct from one another. Their shared interest in historical themes and myth-making, however, is strikingly parallel. Wang and Velasco’s works respond to an innate human desire to understand what links the old and the new. Fusing their own familial and cultural ties with historic elements, both artists explore themes of transformation through their work.  Wang and Velasco’s mutual interests in historicity manifests itself in ways…

February 19 – February 23, 2020 Curator: Blake Oetting Artists: Hue Bui, Monique Muse Cellar / Attic Hue Bui and Monique Muse Few things are as riddled with cliché as the home: “Home is where the heart is,” “a house is not a home,” and “home is wherever you are,” all being examples. These sentimental truisms, among many others, substitute a structural definition of a household for one that is immaterial and transitory. Defining the home through nebulous matrices of familial relationships, biological or chosen, rather than by physical site implies a disavowal of objects, the things of home that…

February 12 – February 16, 2020 Curator: Charlotte Kinberger Artists: Alyx Runyon, Maya Beverly   The Inbetween Western culture loves taxonomy for its ability to simplify and sort. But this sorting breeds boxes––both physical and theoretical, real and imagined––that we sort ourselves and each other into. These boxes become identitarian dichotomies: white/black, woman/man, servant/served. And in their overly simplistic formulation, these bifurcated boxes become cages. Through their work, Alyx Runyon and Maya Beverly explore and expand these limited categories of identity, revealing their confines and finding freedom in their interstices.  Through performative video and sculpture, Runyon makes the limitations of our…

January 29 – February 15, 2020Curators: Liqiao Li, Linda Tauscher, Yinxue WuArtists: Esther Cho, Liz Choh, Xuan Guan, Pin Hsun Hsieh, Jessica Lee, Kaylee Reynolds, Valerie Saputra, Tina Zhou Betwixt and Between The concept of liminality is often charged with ambivalence, interpenetrating the territories of discrete, occasionally antithetical categories. It indicates the possibility of being  “both…and…” while simultaneously suggesting a status of being “neither…nor…” The exhibition brings together a group of eight artists who visualize the liminal space between a series of conceptual opposites. It is thematically organized into three sections. The first departs from the dilemma of choosing between…

I’m Nobody! Who Are You?

A Banana is Not A Lemon

A Veil Between Us

Materializing Time

March 6 – March 9 Curator: Peter Johnson Artists: David Stapleton, Hannah Murphy What does it mean for something to be true? Is it based on subjective phenomenological experience, objective facts or an analytic logical structure that governs our universe? In humankind’s quest for truth and meaning, the category itself has been dynamic, with religious, political and scientific institutions each leading the way at times through the course of history. Calling into question how we experience the world around us and the systems by which we do so, Hannah Murphy and David Stapleton employ sculpture in radical ways to allow…

March 13 – March 16 Curator: Andrea Zambrano Artists: Taryn Marie DeLeon Mendiola, Alston Watson This exhibition highlights the artistic practices of Taryn Marie DeLeon Mendiola and Alston Watson.  Both artists discuss their personal experiences in their work. Their concepts include identity, displacement, race, and culture.  Both are interested in bringing their ideas into the world utilizing non-traditional materials. Their practices transcend various planes of comprehension, and their voices represent not only their narratives, but also their need to declare an autonomy of identity through what they create. DeLeon Mendiola honors culture, tradition, spirituality, and the morphing of gender in…