Juried student showcases, gallery openings, and a wide-ranging lineup of talks and public programs kick off the new year at SVA.
Izzy Liu, Running Dog, 2025, Risograph print, 11 x 17 inches. On view at “Next Up: Ripples.”
Izzy Liu, Running Dog, 2025, Risograph print, 11 x 17 inches. On view at “Next Up: Ripples.”
A new year arrives with a full slate of exhibitions and events at SVA, including the second annual iteration of “Next Up,” a series of juried shows showcasing student work, as well as lectures from the worlds of photography, politics, fine art, publishing, and more.
EXHIBITIONS
Through Tuesday, January 6 | “Migrant Housing: Water as a Medium for Healing” | SVA Flatiron Gallery
An exhibition of work by BFA Interior Design: Built Environments students, alumni, and a collaborative group from the University of Design, Innovation and Technology, Madrid. Migrants who brave perilous waters in search of a better life risk everything. Inspired by this reality, these works are transitional living spaces that embody hope, healing, and heritage. Each 325-square-foot environment integrates water as a restorative element to counteract the traumatic memories of dangerous crossings, while fostering a sense of safety and renewal.
Through Monday, January 19 | “Fluid and Flux” | Online
SVA Continuing Education and Artist Residency Programs present “Fluid and Flux,” a group exhibition curated by Abbas A. Malaker, who says the show “brings together artists for whom making art is a practice of navigating unstable territories where identity, memory, and perception exist in perpetual transformation rather than fixed states. Their work responds to fundamental questions: What drives us to create when nothing feels certain? How do we shape meaning alongside and against the contemporary world? What forms emerge when we work between permanence and change?”
Thursday, January 8 – Saturday, January 24 | “Only a God Can Save Us” | SVA Flatiron Project Space
BFA Visual and Critical Studies presents “Only A God Can Save Us,” an exhibition of multi-media work curated by student Dylan Smith and featuring the work of faculty member and alumnus Joey Gonnella (BFA 2020 Visual and Critical Studies), Nicholas Sanchez, Chloe Lesser, and Sam Stewart. What role does appropriated imagery play in a world of sensory overload? In response to this question, four artists from Generation Z, currently working with reappropriated imagery, will exhibit works that critically engage with the contemporary image and its role, expounding upon the longstanding tradition of appropriation within contemporary art through the utilization of a distinctly poetic approach to tonality.
Thursday, January 15 – Saturday, January 24 | “Next Up: Ripples” | SVA Flatiron Gallery & Windows
Part of SVA Galleries’ second annual “Next Up” exhibition series, which includes three shows across three galleries and showcases the work of 50 emerging student artists, curated by a jury of their peers. The 12 artists in “Next Up: Ripples” explore the porous boundaries between personal histories and collective memories through drawing, painting, printmaking, and photography. Distilling the patterns from nature, home, and childhood, the works on view find comfort in the past while evaluating the structures that aim to organize or contain these moments. Through acts of imagination, thoughtful study, and playful depictions, the works on view represent shared pursuits of a more empathetic world.
MA Curatorial Practice presents “Liquid Crystal Respawn,” curated by student Naomi Moser. The exhibition investigates the porous spaces between life and artifice. The artworks operate within a long lineage of performance as a method of testing the body’s thresholds: what can be outsourced, coded, automated, ritualized, or rebuilt. In these practices, inanimate forms become sites of emotional and spiritual projection, echoing ancient stories of golems—automata brought to life from clay through ritual intention. CP Projects Space is open Monday through Friday, 10:00am – 6:00pm, and weekends by appointment.
Mary T. Konieczny, Receipts, Acrylic on canvas, 18 x 24′, 2025. On view at “Fluid and Flux.”
Mary T. Konieczny, Receipts, Acrylic on canvas, 18 x 24′, 2025. On view at “Fluid and Flux.”
William Gary, Schroeder Plays Beethoven, 2025, oil and mixed media on canvas, 40 x 60 inches. On view at “Next Up: Twisted Vines.”
William Gary, Schroeder Plays Beethoven, 2025, oil and mixed media on canvas, 40 x 60 inches. On view at “Next Up: Twisted Vines.”
Wednesday, January 21 – Tuesday, February 3 | “Next Up: Twisted Vines” | SVA Chelsea Gallery
Part of SVA Galleries’ second annual “Next Up” exhibition series, which includes three shows across three galleries and showcases the work of 50 emerging student artists, curated by a jury of their peers. “Next Up: Twisted Vines” presents 25 artists working across drawing, installation, painting, printmaking, and sculpture, ranging from exuberant pop culture paintings to carefully etched prints, sharply rendered pencil drawings, and mother-of-pearl inlays. Although these approximately 80 artworks cover vast conceptual and visual ground, they primarily focus on establishing peace with oneself, nature, and society. Through lived experiences and cultural traditions, these multinational artists draw on their communities' histories as a rich source of inspiration, as well as their own perspectives on the ongoing lineages.
Wednesday, January 21 – Saturday, February 7 | “Next Up: Tightrope” | SVA Gramercy Gallery
Part of SVA Galleries’ second annual “Next Up” exhibition series, which includes three shows across three galleries and showcases the work of 50 emerging student artists, curated by a jury of their peers. In “Next Up: Tightrope,” 13 artists aim to inform and inspire across bold, material-forward works in design, painting, sculpture, and printmaking. Spanning myriad topics, including the pace of contemporary life, historical texts, psychology, resistance, and self-definition, the exhibition prompts viewers to consider lessons taught by the past, emphasizing the interconnectedness of pattern (in both conceptual and visual respects), play, and introspection.
EVENTS
MFA Fine Arts presents talks by three alumni of the program: Helia Chitsazan (2023), Dylan Rose Rheingold (2022), and Suyi Xu (2022).
Kick off the spring semester with MA Design Research, Writing, and Criticism at a night of readings, drinks, giveaways, and more. Hear short, lively readings from students, alumni, faculty, and friends of the program, including criticism, reporting, research-in-progress, and other works-in-progress. The department will also be doing a little spring cleaning, with boxes of books, magazines, and assorted ephemera to browse and take home.
MPS Digital Photography presents a talk with New York-based French-Canadian artist Rachelle Bussières, part of the i3: Images, Ideas, Inspiration lecture series. Bussières’ practice investigates perception, time, and the natural world through a sensory and material exploration between photography and sculpture. She is also the founder of LUMIERE NYC, a platform dedicated to experimental light-based photographic practices. Grounded in analog darkroom processes, her work integrates scientific observation and intuitive experience by treating time and light as collaborators. Using silver gelatin paper exposed to controlled light sources over durations ranging from seconds to days, she allows images to form through the direct influence of light, time, and environmental conditions.
MFA Fine Arts presents a lecture by the art historian Joan Kee titled “Extended Geometries of Afro Asia.” Kee is Judy and Michael Steinhardt director and professor at NYU’s Institute of Fine Arts and Affiliated Faculty at NYU School of Law. She focuses on how modern and contemporary artworks intersect with diverse phenomena from legal jurisdiction to theories of digital communication.
Tuesday, January 20, 6:30 – 8:00pm | Frances Fox Piven, One Year On | Online
BFA Visual and Critical Studies and the Honors Program welcome back Frances Fox Piven—political scientist, activist and, according to Glenn Beck, one of the “nine most dangerous people in the world”—on the first anniversary of the inauguration, to analyze the first year of Trump's second Presidency and the state of democracy.
Tuesday, January 27, 3:00 – 5:00pm | Jeanine Oleson | 133/141 W 21st St., room 101C & online
MFA Fine Arts presents a lecture by Jeanine Oleson, a transdisciplinary artist working with images, materiality and language, which she forms into complex and sometimes humorous objects, images, videos and performances. An associate professor of Sculpture and the graduate director in the Department of Art & Design at Rutgers University, Oleson has also published two books about performance projects: What? and The Greater New York Smudge Cleanse and Conduct Matters, published by Dancing Foxes Press.
Tuesday, January 27, 7:00 – 8:30pm | i3 Photo Lecture: Sarah Stacke | 136 W 21st St., room 418F
MPS Digital Photography presents a talk with Brooklyn-based photographer, writer, and archival researcher, Sarah Stacke, part of its i3: Images, Ideas, Inspiration lecture series. Through projects created in dialogue with communities, Stacke shares stories about relationships to the land and its histories to excavate under-considered pasts and gain a deeper understanding of the present. Her work appears in Harper’s Magazine, The Nation, NPR, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and National Geographic.
Thursday, January 29, 7:30 – 8:45pm | Phil Penman: ‘Street Scenes’ | 209 E 23rd St., room 311
MPS Digital Photography presents a talk with street photographer Phil Penman on the occasion of his new book Street Scenes, in which Penman pays homage to the world's vibrant metropolises—from the shimmering lights of New York to the enchanted alleyways of Paris and the dynamic streets of Tokyo. Each of his images is a window into the emotional moments and impressive facets of urban life, masterfully captured through his lens. A Q&A and book signing will follow.
Joey Gonnella, Outside - Over There, 2025, acrylic on canvas, 9” x 12.” On view at “Only a God Can Save Us.”
Joey Gonnella, Outside - Over There, 2025, acrylic on canvas, 9” x 12.” On view at “Only a God Can Save Us.”