FALL 2025
On view: September 27-December 14, 2025
Opening reception: Sat. September 27, 6–8PM
Armando Guadalupe Cortés, Dead Parrot Radio
In Gallery One, Armando Guadalupe Cortés will present Dead Parrot Radio, a largescale installation of sound and sculptures that reference various communication technologies, including radio, television, and cellular towers. Through a combination of large, small, and sonic works, Cortés will create a space for potential performance, reflecting on themes of migration, native and invasive fauna, the inability to “go back,” speech as an involuntary gesture, and the moment in which these conclude.
Image: Dead Parrot Radio, in progress installation image. Courtesy of the Artist.
Chang Yuchen, For those who share mornings and evenings
Following threads in Cortés’ work, the concurrent exhibition in Gallery Two considers the affect of communication technologies as a way to explore distance and loss–of time, memory, and shared experiences. Chang Yuchen will present a two-channel video installation comprising selections from a database of screenshots gathered by Chang’s late husband documenting long distance moments the two shared, alongside a dream archive transcribed by the artist a few years later.
Image: Chang Yuchen in collaboration with Yuan Yi, 2012/2020/2025.
WINTER/ SPRING 2026
On view: January 24-April 12, 2026
Opening Reception: Sat. January 24, 2026, 6–8PM
Keli Safia Maksud, Archē (ἀρχή)
Gallery One will host a site-specific installation by Keli Safia Maksud integrating sound, interactive technologies, and sculpture to explore thresholds as a Third Space—a transitory, in-between realm that challenges rigid binaries and defies measurement. The installation grows out of Maksud’s interest in the Door of No Return—the thresholds through which Africans were forced onto slave ships—as well as colonial use of measurement systems such as geometry, thus creating a space where viewers will formally encounter metrics and scales, and pointing to how bodies and spaces are regulated.
Image courtesy of the Artist.
Kate Teale, Vanishing Points
In Gallery Two, Kate Teale will present site-specific graphite and charcoal wall drawings that reflect on architectural details in Smack Mellon’s building, the surrounding neighborhood, and the waterways of Dumbo. Teale looks to architecture as a form of shelter, inspiration, and abstraction with the perspectival depiction that contains the power to distort, evoking a critical threshold toward the point of no return.
Photo by Mary Whalen. Courtesy of the Artist.
SUMMER 2026
On view: June 13-August 2, 2026
Smack Mellon’s 30th Anniversary Exhibition
Title and artist list forthcoming
Finally, to close out our 30th anniversary year, in summer 2026 we will present a group exhibition that reflects on our own legacy. The framework for this exhibition will begin with the most consistent throughline of our operations over the past three decades by exploring the many permutations of work. The exhibition will use the indexical traces— that which is left as a material impression—of labor to explore: the non-glamorous work of institutional maintenance, care work, objects created in service of making other objects, automation, work cultures, and at times invisible artistic labor. The exhibition will include Smack Mellon alumni, new artists, as well as material from our archives.
Header image: Armando Guadalupe Cortés, Dead Parrot Radio, in progress installation image. Courtesy of the Artist.
These exhibitions are supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, New York City Council Member Lincoln Restler, and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature, and with generous support from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Jacques and Natasha Gelman Foundation, Robert Lehman Foundation, Select Equity Group Foundation, many individuals and Smack Mellon’s Members.
Smack Mellon’s programs are also made possible with generous support from The Edward and Sally Van Lier Fund of The New York Community Trust, Jerome Foundation, Lily Auchincloss Foundation, Wolf Kahn Foundation, Cornelia T. Bailey Foundation, Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation Inc, The Roy and Niuta Titus Foundation, and an Anonymous Donor.
In-kind donations and services are provided by Materials for the Arts, NYC Department of Cultural Affairs/NYC Department of Sanitation/NYC Department of Education and Sage and Coombe Architects.
Space for Smack Mellon’s programs is generously provided by the Walentas family and Two Trees Management.
