Parsons Fine Arts 2023 MFA Thesis Exhibition
Matter as Fallen Light
Curated by Kaegan Sparks
Participating artists:
Aliya Al-Adwani, Ash Moniz, Ashleigh Abbott, Bel Andrade, Chelsea Steinberg-Gay, Evelina Nolin, Fahmy Shahin, Fiel Guhit, Gino Romero, Hali Nelson, Henrik Nordahl, Katie Chin, Libby Paloma, Lisa Hennig-Olsen, Luke McCusker, Michelle Silva, Molly Bliss Kiefer, Nat Peterson, Noah Zhou, Pauline Rossignol, Richard Valentín, Shay Salehi, Shining Zhu, Summer McCroskey, Yifei Wang, Xianfan Zhu and Boya Ye.
Location:
Sheila Johnson Design Center
66 Fifth Avenue at 13th Street
New York, NY 10011
Opening hours: 9am-10pm
Dates: April 23rd – May 7th, 2023
Opening Reception: April 22nd, 2023, 5-8pm
Performances:
Libby Paloma, I want to bee, April 22nd, 5:30pm/6.30pm/7.30pm duration 5min
Gino Romero, In the beginning is my end and in the end is my beginning, May 5th, 6pm
The twenty-seven distinct practices that converge in the Parsons 2023 MFA thesis exhibition—by far the largest in recent years—defy a single rubric, and yet, here together, manifest more than the sum of their parts. Returning to their studios and to each other’s company as the pandemic’s restrictions have slowly receded, many artists in this cohort approach space and presence, whether physical or virtual, with new urgency. A surplus of sculpture and installation animates two storefront galleries and their surrounds with blued steel, whorled paper, fired clay, lathed wood, cascading cable, rhinestones, textiles, twine—even a 1969 Lincoln Continental. And, of course, electronic and projected light.
Sight lines within and alongside the galleries, as well as through their windows on 13th Street and Fifth Avenue, yield a mutating object theater. Forms give way to overlapping subject matter, from personal and cultural memory; to translation, linguistic or technological; to idle time, economic abstractions, and ecological fragility. Circumstantial though their assembly may be, these works and their makers play to the contradictions between them as much as they conjure momentary coalitions.
Parsons Fine Arts MFA is a two-year, cross-disciplinary program led by an internationally accomplished faculty committed to expanding the formal, intellectual and conceptual dimensions of emerging artists’ work. Embracing interdisciplinary approaches to making and thinking about visual culture, the program promotes global understanding of the arts through one-on-one studio visits, group critiques, critical theory seminars, studio electives, writing/research, professional training seminars, and interactions with an array of visiting artists and curators. This year visitors included ektor garcia, Dora Budor, Steve Lambert, Shaun Leonardo, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Arghavan Khosravi, Valerio Rocco Orlando, Laurie Kang, Jules Gimbrone, Institute for Queer Ecology, Eugene Ofori Agyei, Eric N. Mack, Victoria Fu, Melissa Joseph, Jordan Staffer and Chason Matthams among many others. In 2022, QS World University Rankings, a London-based higher education organization, named Parsons as the number one college for art and design in the US and number three worldwide for the fifth year in a row.
For more information about Parsons Fine Arts MFA program, visit our website / Facebook / Instagram / Twitter, or contact the MFA Director H Lan Thao Lam at lamh@newschool.edu.