Curatorial Walkthrough – Various Flowers: A LW Alumni Exhibition in NYC

Joeun Kim Aatchim (44) crafts contemporary relics and installs audiovisual essays. She is a self-directed lifelong learner of various ancient art, such as Korean silk paintings, silverpoint, mosaics, ceramics, fresco, intaglio, bookmaking, and ventriloquism. Her recent research focuses on her missing stereovision and the psychology of women. Aatchim's projects have shown internationally, namely at SBC Galerie d'art Contemporain in Montréal, Long March Space in Beijing, and 80 WSE Gallery, The Jewish Museum, and The Drawing Center, in which the Foundation of Contemporary Arts supported her project. She has received fellowships at Nida Art Colony in Lithuania, Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, Open Sessions at The Drawing Center, and was a Lighthouse Works and Triangle Art Association fellow in 2021. She earned her BFA in Studio Arts at New York University and MFA in Visual Arts at Columbia University.

Carlina Duan (54) is a poet from Michigan, and the author of the poetry collections I Wore My Blackest Hair (Little A, 2017) and Alien Miss (Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 2021). Carlina’s poems have appeared in POETRY Magazine, Narrative Magazine, Poets.org, The Rumpus, and other publications. Her writing has been supported with residencies and awards from organizations such as Tin House, the Academy of American Poets, the U.S. Fulbright Program, and the Hopwood Program. Carlina received her M.F.A. in Poetry from Vanderbilt University, and is currently a Ph.D. Candidate in the University of Michigan’s Joint Program in English and Education, where she also serves as the Poetry Editor for Michigan Quarterly Review. Among many things, she loves river walks, snail mail, and being a sister.

Ryan Flores (45) is a sculptor based in Los Angeles. He received a BFA in Ceramics from California State University, Long Beach and an MFA in Sculpture + Extended Media from Virginia Commonwealth University. Recent exhibitions include the solo show The Fruit Vendor at Moskowitz Bayse and the group exhibition Sueñx at the Mistake Room, both in Los Angeles, as well as Shelf Life, at Marlborough Gallery, London.

Merik Goma (53) is a New Haven-based photographer and alumni of the NXTHVN Studio Fellowship Program, an arts incubator. Goma builds intricate sets within his studio that he uses both as subjects of tableaux and as backdrops for narrative portrait photography. His technique is painterly in execution, with close attention paid to color and lighting. His work has been shown by Tilton Gallery and is in the collection of Yale University and the Detroit Institute of Art. In 2021, Goma was selected as the Joyce C. Willis Artist in Residence by the Amistad Center for Arts & Culture at the Wadsworth Atheneum.

Rachel Granofsky (30) has an MFA from California College of the Arts and a BFA from Pratt Institute. She had her first solo show at Rachel Uffner in New York City in 2019. She was the 2019 Deutsche Bank NYFA Fellow. Rachel was an artist in residence at the Drawing Center’s Open Sessions program, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Lighthouse Works, Ox-Bow and Greatmore Studios. She has exhibited in group shows in South Africa, Germany, Sweden, Canada, the U.S.A. and Brazil. Born in Montreal, Quebec, Rachel currently lives and works in the Catskill Mountains.

Leah Guadagnoli (27) lives and works in Brooklyn. She received her MFA in Visual Art from Rutgers University in 2014. She has had solo exhibitions at 247365 in New York and at Sadie Halie Projects in Minneapolis. Her work has been included in group exhibitions at White Columns, Harper's Books, Asya Geisberg, Cuevas Tillard, Hero Beach Club, and Library Street Collective, among others. In 2016 Guadagnoli was a recipient of the Vermont Studio Centers full Fellowship Award and attended Yaddo in 2015. She is the founder of the Maple Terrace Artist Residency Program. Her work has been reviewed in New American Paintings, Art F City, Maake Magazine, The Brvtalist, Little Star Weekly, and by Maria Brito.

Evan Halter (47) (b. 1990 Cincinnati, OH) Lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Evan combines imagery sourced from Renaissance paintings with an interest in the vocabularies of minimalism and abstraction. In 2013 he graduated with a BFA in Painting from the Art Academy of Cincinnati, and received his MFA from Rutgers University in 2016. Solo exhibitions of Halter’s work include a presentation at Future Fair with Turley Gallery (2023); Vanitas, The Java Project, Brooklyn, NY (2018); and Partitions, Clay St Press, Cincinnati, OH (2018). His work has been included in numerous group exhibitions, such as: Present in a Lonely Image, Alexander Gray Associates, Germantown, NY (2023); Knowing When, Turley Gallery, Hudson, NY (2022); This is not Surrealism, Dinner Gallery, NY, NY (2022); Crafting Reverence, Carracci Art, NY, NY (2022); The New Iconographies, SPRING/BREAK Art Show, New York, NY (2021); memoirs, Pablo’s Birthday, New York, NY (2020); The Hawt Show II, Rolando Anselmi Gallery, Atina, Italy (2020); The Barn Show 2019, Johannes Vogt Gallery, East Hampton, New York (2019).

Halter has completed residencies at The Lighthouse Works on Fishers Island, NY (2021), the Banff Centre for the Arts in Alberta, Canada (2016), The Advanced Painting Intensive, Columbia University School of the Arts, New York, NY (2013), and The New York Studio Program in New York, NY (2011).

Gretta Johnson (20) is a New York-based artist (b. 1985 in Milwaukee, WI.) She received her BFA from RISD in 2008. Her paintings, drawings, and sculptures have been exhibited among others, at the Desk of Lucy Bull, Condo NY with Night Gallery hosted by Rachel Uffner Gallery, Paris London Hong Kong in Chicago, IL, L' Inconnue, Feuer/Mesler, Safe Gallery, and Assembly Room in NY, Holiday Forever Gallery in Wyoming and Harpy Gallery in New Jersey. In 2015, her second art book OOLM was published by Dark Chart Press, and she is currently working on completing illustrations for a book of Creation Myths from around the world, with text written by Susan Strauss. Johnson also collaborates with Grimm Artisanal Ales to design an ongoing series of otherworldly labels.

Erin Johnson's (50) short films and video installations interlace documentary, experimental, and narrative filmmaking devices to interrogate notions of collectivity, dissent, and queer identity. In her shape-shifting videos, site-specific performances by artists, biologists, and film extras address the legacies of science and imperialism. Johnson received an MFA and Certificate in New Media from UC Berkeley in 2013, attended Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture in 2019, and recently completed residencies at Pioneer Works (Brooklyn, NY), the Jan van Eyck Academie (Maastricht, NL), Lower Manhattan Community Council (NYC, NY), and Surf Point (York, Maine), and Hidrante (San Juan, Puerto Rico). She is an Assistant Professor of Film and Video at the Maryland Institute College of Art.

Simone Kearney (21) is a NY-based artist and writer whose practice primarily includes stone and ceramic sculpture, drawing, painting, textile and text. She has exhibited her work internationally, and her most recent work is currently on view in “Various Flowers” at Hirschl & Adler Modern in Manhattan, and at Underland Gallery in Brooklyn. Her chaplet, “A Big Salad (An Excerpt)" came out in 2022, and her first full-length book of poems, DAYS, came out in 2021, both with Belladonna Press. She has been artist in residence at the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, the Edward Albee Foundation, and Ragdale, among others. She was a 2019 Shandaken Fellow in Paintschool, and a 2014 NYFA Fellow. She currently teaches at Parsons School for Design.

Antone Könst [7] (b. 1987, New Haven, USA) received his BFA from CalArts, his MFA from Yale University School of Art, and lives in Brooklyn, NY. He has exhibited widely across the U.S. and abroad, including solo exhibitions at Tilton Gallery, NY; Marianne Boesky Gallery, NY; Each Modern, Taipei; Artist Curated Projects, Los Angeles; and the Fondation des Etats Unis, in Paris. Könst has won Public Art commissions from Lighthouse Works, NY and Socrates Sculpture Park, NY; and has participated in group exhibitions with Anton Kern, NY; Beers Gallery, London; Mrs Gallery, NY; Galerie Jeanroch Dard, Brussels; and others. He is a recipient of the Rema Hort Mann Grant as well as the Harriet Hale Woolley Fellowship. He will have a show at Tilton Gallery, NY in September, 2023.

Andrea McGinty (32) (b. 1985, Sunrise, FL) in an artist and writer based in New York, NY. McGinty’s work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally, with recent solo and two person exhibitions at East Hampton Shed (East Hampton, NY), Holiday Forever (Jackson, WY), Miami Prácticas Contempoaneas (Bogota, Colombia), High Tide (Philadelphia, PA), and Hotel-Art.us (New York, NY). She is the author of “God, I Don’t Even Know Your Name”, a novella published by Badlands Unlimited (2015), and her work has been featured in publications such as Mousse Magazine, W Magazine, T Magazine and The Paris Review. McGinty received her MFA in Fine Arts from the School of Visual Arts (New York, NY) in 2014.

Helina Metaferia (28) is an interdisciplinary artist working across collage, assemblage, video, performance, and social engagement. Metaferia received her MFA from Tufts University’s School of the Museum of Fine Arts and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Her work was included in the Sharjah Biennial, United Arab Emirates. She’s held solo exhibitions at Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; RISD Art Museum, Providence, RI; and Museum of African Diaspora, San Francisco, CA. Her work is in the permanent collection of institutions including Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York, NY. Metaferia’s work has been written about in publications including The New York Times, Financial Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, Artnet News and The Art Newspaper. Metaferia is an Assistant Professor at Brown University in the Visual Art department, and lives and works in New York City.

Arden Surdam (43) (b. 1988 New York, NY) is an American artist based in Switzerland. Working in sculpture and photography, her practice addresses material reorganizations in natural landscapes from extractivism, synthetic pollutants, and invasive species. Through this research, Surdam considers the ethical and political impacts of humans on non-human worlds. Recent exhibitions include ‘UPROOT’ in Bern, Switzerland (2022), ‘No Mad’ in Thun, Switzerland (2022); ‘Built In’ at Neutra VDL House, Los Angeles, USA (2021); ‘Ligature’ Fishers Island, US (2021); Metro Pictures, New York, USA, (2019); and NADA ‘FAIR’ with Gallery Kendra Jayne Patrick (2020). Surdam’s work will be featured in Anicka Yi’s upcoming publication “Nested Ecologies” organized by former MIT curator, Alise Upitis, and released in 2025. Next year, she will hold her first solo-show in Switzerland at Juraplatz, Biel and will be an artist-in-residence at Ars Bioartica in Helsinki, Finland.

Paul Wackers (21) was born in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1978. He received a BFA from Corcoran College of Art and Design in Washington, DC, and an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. Recent solo exhibitions include The space we take at Eleanor Harwood Gallery in San Francisco, California (2021); IN A HOUSE OF SHIFTING FORMS at Alice Gallery in Brussels, Belgium (2019); and Silent Language at Galeria Impakto in Lima, Peru (2018). Recent group exhibitions include Earth’s Debit at Public Land in Sacramento, California (2022); Twenty Year Anniversary Exhibition at Morgan Lehman Gallery in New York (2022); and Nature Morte at The Hole in New York (2021). Wackers’ work can be found in collections including MIMA Museum in Brussels, Belgium. Wackers lives and works in New York