Smack Mellon presents An Unofficial Gathering, an exhibition of selected works by the 2020/2021 MFA Graduates from Brooklyn College that address a wide range of issues and sensibilities. Working across painting, sculpture, textiles, video, photography, drawing, and installation, this exhibition reflects on the limits of commonality at a time when the entire world experienced an event both together and in isolation. United by their commitment to their own singular diversions of social narratives and visual cultures, the fourteen participating artists have developed their own worlds, systems, narratives, and perspectives, celebrating the textures that compose these separate universes. Their practices are modeled on the likeness of a common experience of the world, but have each taken a turn into their own realm, solidified over the past year of deeply internal focus. 

This exhibition marks the first collective display by this particular group of students since the beginning of the lockdown, physically gathering their bodies of works after more than a year apart. Together and individually, the works address the consequences of the splintering realities that have shaped the past eighteen months, asking: what becomes visible in the wake of the slow collapse of myriad systems, many of which are fictions of larger entities? What new worlds are revealed when the activities that gave texture and meaning to a collective experience are removed from daily routines? 

Featured Artists: Paul Carney, Ak Jansen, Catherine Jones, Marlene Kryza, Matt Nianzhang Liu, Lance Lubin, Tamara Mouzon, Jesse Scaturro, Michael Serafino, Sara Montoya Shannon, Paige Silvestri, Brandy Wednesday, James Kevin Wilson, and Paul Wylenczek.

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Space for Smack Mellon’s programs is generously provided by the Walentas family and Two Trees Management.