In the interest of full disclosure, we’d like to inform you that the opening for the MFA show has yet to occur. F Newmagazine actually traveled into the future, via a cool bit of cyborg magic, in order to review the show before its public unveiling.
The mix of work in the show is, unsurprisingly, very interesting. It offers a pulse-taking moment for the emerging generation of creators, highlighting the effort of artists that have, to a certain degree, come into their own. Many of the trends demonstrated by the graduate work are similar to the ones put forth by their undergraduate counterparts (which points to an overall cohesion within the school), but their execution is more researched and refined.
The Graduate Exhibition is very installation-heavy, and the content alternates between representational illustration work and utterly abstract assemblage, reflecting artists that are functioning at a high level of intellectual rigor. While the BFA show concerned itself mostly with an uneasy commentary, the MFA show is on the whole much more comfortable with its enunciations of the creators’ unique perspectives. The work is therefore more obscure, but also more substantial.
The exhibition is, on the whole, a great showcase for a group of artists shedding the “emerging” label and rising to meet the challenge of the contemporary art world.
