Joshua Evans “Fantasia” (2024) summarizes how many of us currently feel. The figure is half metamorphosis – but does not seem to have much choice or enjoy it as much. Despite its entirely formed lack of feet, and the uncertainty and the sadness that surround it, the figure draws the path to come. “He tries to negotiate who he will be … but it is not yet entirely clear, ”explained Evans to Hyperalgic. “It happens despite everything.” As many of us face the fallout from Trump's second term, and its many unwanted changes, “Fantasia” looks like a portrait of our Zeitgeist.
Roman poet Horace once informed That “when the path of life is steep, keep your mind uniform.” Of course, it is easier to say than to do with the collapse of the market and to the rule of law. The artists of the Cohort of the School of Visual Arts of the School of Fine Arts of this year update the old adage of Horace with new metaphors on navigation on the treacherous and uncertain path. While we are entering an uncertain future, these MFA artists offer timely reflections to try to trace the future trip.
In “Alien du Mal du Pays”, RUOXI (Jarvis) HUA Offers two unequal painted painting panels from East Village in New York at night. The more a spectator looks at the work, the more incongruous they become. On the left, the traffic signal post and its mast arm are not aligned with the traffic panel on the right, which is also partially shortened. The more we linger on work, the more badly you feel badly. As Hua explained: “I made the sign this way of moving things … I wanted to give more ambiguity to the board.”
Nathalie Marti The “Starless” sculpture (2025) addresses growing hostility towards marginalized people in the United States by incorporating red, white and blue of the American flag without any star, alluding to the decreasing radiance of the democratic ideals of the nation. In the sculpture, a young bird fell from the nest, while a red hand prohibits it return. Meanwhile, a white hand raises the other birds in the nest above. “These are people who are left out,” said Marti. She skillfully portrays the invisible hand of the market, which inflicts so much harm on vulnerable people, as a faceless author.
Hyunjun Yang Takes another system of power and marginalization in his drawing “Stroke the Cock” (2024), in which a man is suffocated by his own penis. Yang addresses the toxic masculinity of a more unorthodox body angle, examining the unhealthy relations that men can have with their sexualities, their families and their wider communities by satirizing the relationship that many men have with their own penis. In the drawing, Yang explained: “The penis has enough because man is addicted to masturbating”, criticizing the lack of self -control and respect for others that many confuse freedom.
Isa Yixin Yang Takes this family definition of love in his burning work “The equation of love I” (2025), inviting each of us to think about the love we have received in childhood and the paths he explained for us. Yang parents have methodically followed all the expenses they have incurred on the education of children aged four to 23. On the walls of the gallery, she supervises the big book of these expenses. Next to it, she hooks the documentation for a house she bought for her parents, then an authorization certificate of debt certifying that Yang no longer owes to her parents, which they signed. As Yang explained in his artist declaration, “by creating this work together, we have built a new type of love – the one that no longer looks like a debt, but a clean slate.”
In the works of the thesis of the SVA MFA, the SVA shows, the path is sometimes direct; In others, it is more metaphorical, subtle or even dark. All these artists, however, respond in their own way to our uncertain time, some offer possibilities to partially and collectively make an upcoming path.
WonderThe exhibition of the thesis of Fine Arts of the 2025 visual arts school, organized by Rachel Raphaela Gugelberger, is seen at the SVA Chelsea Gallery (601 West 26th Street, floor 15, Chelsea, Manhattan) until May 6.
