A Visit to the Class of 2026 First Year MFA Exhibition
On Sunday, March 30, 2025, twenty-eight of New York's most cutting-edge emerging artists debuted new works in one of the city's most exciting group shows: the School of the Arts' annual First Year MFA Exhibition.The pieces on view spoke to the intersections of bodies and technologies, medium specificity, and explosive interdisciplinarity.
That unseasonably warm opening day, visitors curved around the width of the Lenfest Center in a long line abuzz with excited chatter. The spacious neon orange elevators, packed with elegantly-clad art appreciators, opened into a vibrant gallery. Akira Kawahata's gelatin silver print, SELENO-2015-0507-2345-0508-0509, floated, dreamlike, in front of what looked like a six-foot-tall steampunk jellyfish: Dungeon Crawl (metal pipes, metal wires, hoses, wood, and mixed media) by Eugene Jung. Its neighbor, Rafael Rodriguez's Interfacing Actuality (3D printed thermoplastic polyurethane, aluminum wire, neodymium magnet, and virtual reality experience using Meta Quest VR headset)—vaguely reminiscent of human bones and blood vessels, yet decidedly technological—seemed to skitter up the gallery wall. Visitors streamed out, enthralled by their ephemera from Sound Art student Alek Green's installation, endless music (found materials): small paper pouches which proclaimed in green ink, "IN HERE YOU WILL FIND ENDLESS MUSIC." My cat would agree; they each contained one small rectangle of aluminum foil.
In the compressed space of the gallery, it was impossible not to view the works in relation to one another. While I determined that, yes, that was in fact a taxidermied heron's leg poking out of a pool noodle in Harold Garcia V's The Heron's Silent Song (molasses silkscreen on canvas, oriented strand board, pool tiles, polyvinyl chloride, concrete blocks, ratchet straps, caster wheels, pool noodles, metal rods, metal wires, heron taxidermy leg, treated crystalized molasses, rebar, and feathers), disparate rhythms and vocalizations from sound and video installations mingled with the din of visitors, creating a multi-sensory creative cacophony. It was, I imagine, what the opposite of a sensory deprivation tank would be like—a sensory indulgence tank?
I visited the gallery again, a week later, to have a quieter, more intimate experience of the work. Viewing art is uniquely personal—one person's experience might have very little to do with another's. But if you weren't able to experience it for yourself, here's a snapshot of my encounter with the exhibition:
In Sound Art student Miguel Gallego’s The soul imagined at age six (single-board computer, ham radio and audio software, projector, speakers, and microphone), image and sound cascaded down the wall in pixels and what I can only describe, as a layman, as intricately layered beeps and boops. This was his first time publicly exhibiting his work—an experience he described to me as both relieving and intimidating. Gallego mused, "It's a piece that's responsive to the sounds of a space, so it was fascinating to see how it functioned during a loud and crowded reception—something I could never simulate in my own space."
To the left of this, I was confronted with Soomin Kang's foreboding Soft Exit (grip handles, steel, and ball chain)—a dystopic swing set in which the seat is uncannily mechanical and pelvic. This set the scene for a larger visual conversation about bodies, their instability, and their collisions with technologies. I interpreted Yeji Cho's piece, Prosthetic Organism (plastic, electronic wires, Arduino, motors, speaker, paper, and frame), as a decontextualized blue-nippled breast, from which amphibian chirps emerged. I loved this strange creature so much I reached out to Cho for comment:
"Seeing the way the fetus and the mother lean into one another to exist, I sometimes feel that a pregnant woman belongs to neither the category of man nor woman—but a new species," she said. While this was not exactly the creature I imagined, it was certainly a hybrid creature—and one, though equally delightful, that provoked more interesting questions about relationality, embodiment, and cycles of life.
"Sharing breeds sharing," Cho told me. "And sharing this visual work makes room for pleasant misunderstandings—the kind where original intentions fade just enough for new stories to slip in, the kind I always look forward to"—and I'm glad she feels that way.
Cho's piece was in literal conversation with Jeannie Rhyu's Banked Wishes (glazed porcelain and sand), which included a cone of sand that trembled in response to Prosthetic Organism's vibrations. Michael Igwe's Untitled (acrylic on canvas) dealt with bodies and their limits, as well. Ghostlike figures blurred into the "background"—though that is an insufficient term for this sort of composition—more accurately, the figures dissipated into a deep, dried-blood red.
Decadently colorful and textured, Jenny Williams' portraits, Patchwork Chair Portrait #3 / Night Sky and Patchwork Chair Portrait #2 / Sunrise (oil on linen), disrupted preconceived notions of portraiture, as well. Featuring hot pink flowers, electric blue grasses, and what appeared to be a portal into another universe, Williams' backgrounds were attended to with fastidiousness nearly equal to her subjects. I qualify this statement with "nearly" only because she portrayed each subject's personal style so dedicatedly—their tattoos, braided hair, and unique rings decorating each manicured finger—that the level of detail is frankly unmatchable.
Williams recalled the somewhat serendipitous inception of these paintings, which she had originally imagined at a much smaller scale: "Just before I started, a faculty member put out the word that they were selling these huge (to me—I’ve never made such big paintings) pre-stretched, ready-made canvases on the cheap." While models Danny Castro, a second year MFA, and Christine Miller, a fellow first year, may have not anticipated their likenesses being captured at such a grand scale, their lush self-expression was a perfect match for Williams' careful eye.
Youkyoung Cho's mixed-media installation, Azalea Hill (single-channel video installation, silkscreen, pressed flower petals, digital print on paper, and artist frame) was a feast for the eyes and ears with its gritty surfaces, reverberant scenes, and poetic storytelling.
In the making of this piece, Cho was grounded by a phrase: “Mother’s skirt, the color of soil, touched the ground and tethered itself to the land.” As the video loops, so do various layered images: wide hoop skirts, factory workers raking huge piles of oyster shells, and a k-pop-styled trio dancing and singing among the discarded oyster shells. The exhibition allowed Cho the space for these disjunctive layers (connected through the broader strokes of femininity, myth, and industry) to resonate in unique ways for each viewer.
"Coming from a culturally homogeneous place like Korea, I was curious how my work would be received here. It was meaningful to hear such a wide range of responses, and comforting to see that some feelings resonated across cultures. It gave me a quiet sense of reassurance," Cho said.
I asked how it felt to finally be there, at the finish line. "The opening was full of energy—many familiar and unfamiliar faces," Cho said. "Still, I remember standing at the 8th floor reception, wine in hand, looking out at the New York skyline. After the long and layered process of making the work, that moment felt like a gentle reward."