There is a tendency when it comes to MFA shows to apply a different set of standards – it’s good “for student work”; It is a showcase for the growing talent that will be suitable for the galleries with a touch of customization, a little back. So just let me say this in advance: the work at the Hunter College MFA Show is excellent. In five different group shows that run for about 10 days a day in the gallery of the college in Tribeca, these artists have their own.
Every iteration has a certain DNA. The first, entitled Look in both waysIs something of a funhouse: trick levels, hallucinating colors. Meredith Bakke’s Oil-On-Canvas “Doom Addict” (2024) shows a cartoon-like figure whose eyes dive into a computer screen in the arms of a grinning spirit, and Emily Wichtrich’s Carnivalesque installation of a circus tent and his colorful characters tussen tent.
But a few binding themes run through all five shows. One rich vein is that of technology and its questions, with accompanying themes of waste, monitoring and wealth differences. Take, for example, the assembly of Rosalie G. Smith, combined from the waste we inherited after the Ultra-Elite-Jets leave for a distant planet. Ik las de sculpturen van Aashish Gadani in een soortgelijke ader-ik hield van “Top 10 plaatsen om te ontsnappen aan EMF-straling: 5G & EMF-vrije zones over de hele wereld” (2025) in het bijzonder, waarin gedrukte latex door een houten armatuur wordt gestoken, met wifi-antennes die door de benen van een fata van een lever worden gestoken. The sculptures and assemblies of Craig Jun Li are romantic and creepy-encapsulated flower, gifted from an ex-boyfriend in 2022, opens the third iteration of the show as an enchanted rose that the clock has risen. And the blue and red textile from E Rady, printed with a conversation between computer and user about Zionism, are Kafkesque in their bureaucratic cold in a suitable way.
The Eco-Critque of Vanessa Sandoval was a highlight. Worthy ceramic bulbs in bulbs, pyramids and blocks are playfully littered over a table, in addition to video work in which flags with slogans such as “This is how the world ends” (Viewers can fill in the rest of the line with TS Eliot: “Not with a blast, but with a blast”) lazy with the wind. I also loved the series of truck stop photos by Jani Zubkovs, in which slogans and “pray for our world” – both religion and apocalyps call – can be seen under high gas prices.
Painting is in the minority in these shows, but where it is present, it is strong. Highlights include the mixed media cloths of Mariel Rolwing Montes, which have the fragmented, the apparent quality of memory, and Bayan Kiwan’s enormous pastel image of friends, bodies spilled over each other as in the cloths of Salman Toor. I also felt attracted to the beautifully shocked abstractions of Anthony Torrano, some of which wear the material prints of the outside world – a moon cake, a stamp with the expression “SF Public toilet”. In the meantime, the canvases of Anastasya Peña de Helen Frankenthaler-like quality of pigment bleeding in water, cut by sharp, intentional edges. And the Roiling Multi-Media Works from Xingyun Wang wear a kind of encaustic weight-so-it contain materials such as sand and pumice that both requirements and rewards close.
Many of these works act as a glimpse in extraterrestrial environment, such as in the spooky, quasi-digital pastel-colored vistas of Magdalen Pickering or at Gregor’s cloths, which think of the underground half-light of metro tunnels. And the mixed media cloths from Justin Muegge offer dreamy collagated perspectives of gardens and halfway inner spaces.
Elsewhere, the individual objects have flown from other worlds. The sculptures of Mark Ferraro suggest melted furniture, while Nava Derakhshani and Sadaf Azadehfar contribute both fountains; The first presents an installation with swollen eyes that are strung from the ceiling. Azadehfar, in the meantime, worlds worldly around a series of motifs, including snakes, which can be seen in wooden panels on the wall and whose ceramic mouths broadcast water in “whose world is this?” (2023). And the sculptures of Vaishu Ilankamban reveal her experience as an engineer and woodworker, which combine ceramics and concrete plates with printing other objects – I look forward to the possibility of experiencing a complete environment in a solo show.
The Barebones material from plywood appears about the works of several artists, although they are no less polished for it. Shannon Pritchard’s sculpture is reminiscent of a stripped or unfinished house and offers voyeuristic viewing holes. The spooky, connected canvases of Jacob Muilenburg, who mention unseen referees in their titles (“Blue Couch”, “Corner of Closet”), are sometimes put against multiplex luminaires. And conceptual sculptor Martin Miller stuck threads and surveillance cameras through different rooms and an impregnable multiplex box.
During the Hunter MFA show, art is laid on the handrails, strung by the trusses, loom against the walls, encountered around the corners, a glimpse collected by portholes, arrived as physical environments. I can’t wait for them to enter the bigger world, as they deserve to do. These are artists to watch.
World animalThe fifth iteration of the Hunter College MFA thesis show, continues in the 205 Hudson Gallery (205 Hudson, Tribecca, Manhattan), until 28 May. The previous four iterations ran from 6 March 11. 11. The exhibition was organized by the gallery.
