After Yale Staged Its MFA Students’ Graduate Show IRL, Perrotin Gallery Revived It Online—See It Here

As galleries and art institutions around the world begin to reopen, we are spotlighting individual shows—online and IRL—that are worth your attention.

“Yale Painting and Printmaking MFA 2020”
Online at Perrotin, through July 18

What Yale Ph.D candidate Alexandra M. Thomas says: “These artists take us elsewhere: to the bar with friends; the electricity of queer nightlife; a crowded swimming pool on a sunny day; the affective space of nostalgia for girlhood; the fashion catwalk. We witness earthly pleasures: flowers in bloom, erotic bodies entangled, trees and the sweet fruits they bear…

The sheer range of materials and forms within the language of painting testifies to a propensity for bricolage. These modes of assemblage, performance, and representation are ancestral and innovative. This generation of artists inherits the language of painting and injects into it new media, anticolonial politics, and a range of creative intimacies…

And what of this uniquely twenty-first century exhibition format, in which a show is delivered to us in an easily consumable hyperlink? I invite you to consider these glorious experiments in expression, gesture, and media offered by the Yale Painting MFA class of 2020. The creative and intellectual labor that forms the impetus for this virtual exhibition mobilizes new modes of looking and feeling in our quarantined and screen-based times.”

Why it’s worth a look: With so many students missing out on the rites of passage associated with the final months of the school year, Perrotin has stepped up to offer its online viewing room to graduate students from Yale’s prestigious MFA program in painting and printmaking.

The artists on view include Africanus Okokon, Aryana Minai, Carly Sheehan, Chiffon Thomas, Edd Ravn, Hangama Amiri, José Chavez-Verduzco, James Bartolacci, Kathia St. Hilaire, Kern Samuel, Kevin Brisco, Krystal DiFronzo, María de los Àngeles Rodríguez Jiménez, Rebecca Shippee, Sara Emsaki, Tim Brawner, Trevon Latin, Victoria Martinez, and Ye Qin Zhu.

What it looks like:

Africanus Okokon, everywhere you go (2019). Courtesy of the artist.

Africanus Okokon, Verbatim I (2020). Courtesy of the artist.

Aryana Minai, Echoe XII (2020). Courtesy of the artist.

Carly Sheehan, Untitled (2020). Courtesy of the artist.

Chiffon Thomas, Bound to Burden (2020). Courtesy of the artist.

Edd Ravn, Hand-rolled ink 5 (2020). Courtesy of the artist.

Edd Ravn, Temporary stack; phase i/ii (2019). Courtesy of the artist.

Hangama Amiri, Jannah/Paradise #1 (2020). Courtesy of the artist.

Hangama Amiri, Bahar, Beauty Parlor (Arayeshe, Bahar) (2019). Courtesy of the artist.

Jose Chavez-Verduzco, Bligh² (2020), Courtesy of the artist.

James Bartolacci, Leftovers (2020). Courtesy of the artist.

Kathia St. Hilaire, Biba Bijoux (2020). Courtesy of the artist.

Kern Samuel, B-20-02 (Feeding the System) (2020). Courtesy of the artist.

Kern Samuel, B-20-03 (Healing) (2020). Courtesy of the artist.

Kevin Brisco, Prosperity Gospel (2020). Courtesy of the artist.

Krystal DiFronzo, Whispering Bells (2020). Courtesy of the artist.

Krystal DiFronzo, Unformed Venus (2019). Courtesy of the artist.

María de los Àngeles Rodríguez Jiménez, still from 29 Latigazos v.2., (2020). Courtesy of the artist.

María de los Àngeles Rodríguez Jiménez, Menina Y (2020). Courtesy of the artist.

Rebecca Shippee, 1:23 (2020). Courtesy of the artist.

Sara Emsaki, still from Holy Land of the Infertile Crescent, (2020).

Trevon Latin, Welcome (2020). Courtesy of the artist.

Trevon Latin, Purple Love (2020). Courtesy of the artist.

Victoria Martinez, Sometimes you gotta close a door to open a window (2020). Courtesy of the artist.

Victoria Martinez, Weaving 1 (2019). Courtesy of the artist.

Ye Qin Zhu, Triptych (Reason Trail | Sight, Taste, Appetite | Searching the Loop (2019). Courtesy of the artist.