School of Visual Arts (SVA) presents “New Ways of Doing Things,” an exhibition of work by 10 students in the MFA Art Practice program, curated by faculty member Jacquelyn Strycker. The exhibition will be on view from Thursday, July 13, through Monday, July 31, at the SVA Flatiron Gallery, 133/141 West 21st Street, New York City. 

Artists in the show include Melanie Brewster, Dana Donaty, Elena Kalkova, Maria Markham, Grace McCoy, Josh Stein, Jerry Strohkorb, Valerie Vermuelen, Melissa Wheeler and Antonia Wright. Through a range of mediums, the artists question, challenge, resist and deconstruct hegemonic structures, offering “New Ways of Doing Things.” 

Melanie Brewster’s Rose Quartz Weighted Blanket critiques capitalist wellness practices with a paradoxical mix of both humor and sincerity. 

Dana Donaty’s Charmed disarms the viewer with a Seussical approach to the patriarchy. 

Elena Kalkova reproduces chunks of concrete walls graffitied with anti-war messages in Russia in a silent scream against the grips of facism. 

Maria Markham’s Ghost in the Machine (Fragmented Modernities), gives us a spatiotemporal grid that activates space and challenges notions of time as sequential.

Grace McCoy queers The Profane and the Sacred, inviting visitors to kneel at a queer altar in the form of an iridescent bench, gaze up at an image of the artist’s wife, and bask in the spiritual warmth and validation of purple LED lights.

Josh Stein transforms colored hot glue into 111 Gestures, a surrealist dream of manual moveable grammar.

Jerry Strohkorb’s paintings cry out against the dehumanization and inequity of the American healthcare system. 

Valerie Vermuelen’s arched thin red line cuts through a black abyss to create a portal to Hope.

Melissa Wheeler performs sympathetic magic in a post-Roe world through her pregnant clay vessels. 

Antonia Wright’s And so with ends come beginnings is a metaphor for the dualities of ecstasy and anxiety of living in a paradise for ground-zero sea-level rise.

MFA Art Practice is a low-residency, interdisciplinary graduate program that aims to facilitate a global conversation about the arts. Through a combination of online and in-person learning, the program endeavors to foster an atmosphere of risk-taking and experimentation, and to create a community of artists and culture producers who look beyond a consensus-driven approach to define what’s important in contemporary art. A carefully selected group of candidates comes together on campus for three successive, intensive summer residency periods, using the intervening fall and spring semesters to engage in required, rich-media online coursework from all over the world, combining personal narrative with critical theory to be active citizen artists.

The SVA Flatiron Gallery is open Monday through Saturday, 10:00am – 6:00pm. Masks are encouraged but not required.