Be Your Own Puppet

Stephen Gurtowski

Chris Albert Lee

Gabrielle Vitollo

Eric Manuel Santoscoy-Mckillip

Harry Kleeman

Marz Saffore

Kaushani Patel

Carly Burnell

Billy Jacobs

Caitlyn McLaughlin

Organized by Jason Tomme

Along with political and civic anxiety, art too is in a strange place in that it finds itself wrestling with more competing issues, values, conditions, styles, market wobbles etc. than any other time in history. Though daunting, isn’t this also a fantastic moment for anyone willing to give it a go? The art made in the world as it is, is poised to be as vital and complicated as ever, precisely because of these tensions. There are so many options and tools on the table, and that is a good thing.

During the presidential debate when Trump rejoined, “You’re the Puppet!” to Hillary’s charge of him being Putin’s puppet, we caught a glimpse of our incoming socio-political world: an absurd and comic book-like plotline, altering earth’s trajectory and previous notions of reality. All those norms, poof!— spooling out into a seemingly endless malaise of holy-moly mind-fuckery. If the careful and concerned still howl at this democratically fueled toppling of norms, as we should, then there also stand the artists, weirdos and Young People (or anyone, really), who see this as an opportunity to shape the seemingly bizarro-land of late as one's own, establishing that time-honored license to get ill. As we should.

All the artists in this show are recent NYU MFAs, friends and peers who met during the transition from the Obama to Trump era and whose recent work was made during the ongoing “fall of norms.” Not that these particular eras mean everything, but they do mean something. Beyond that, there’s no overarching theme other than an exhibition of artists with each their own world to twist into knots and truths to bend.