School of Visual Arts (SVA) presents “Interior Motives,” an exhibition of video, photography and prints by current students and recent alumni exploring romantic relationships and domestic family life. Curated by Richard Brooks, assistant director of Student Galleries, the exhibition is on view May 24 through June 15 at the Westside Gallery, 133/141 West 21st Street, New York City.

Amy Davis (an MFA Photography, Video and Related Media student) presents color portraits of children photographed in their home environments. At once straightforward and psychologically complex, the artist’s thoughtful compositions capture both candid family activities and solitary, reflective moments.

Anna Costa e Silva’s (MFA 2013 Fine Arts) video piece, Encounter Study, is an intimate portrait of a relationship composed in non-linear form. Blending images, sounds and words, as in a collage painting, the artist examines desire, solitude and transitory feelings.

Keith Negley’s (MFA 2013 Illustration as Visual Essay) color prints from his “We Tell No One” series explore sexuality, masculinity and fatherhood. The artist uses paint, charcoal and graphite to create scenes with stylized figures in interior and exterior environments. Pieces depicting a man forcing himself on a young woman in the dark while a young boy watches from behind a door and a young couple seen from a distance dwarfed by a thick forest of birch trees demonstrate his use of composition and context to create tension and mystery.

Mommy’s Not Home is a four-channel video installation by Sinan Tuncay (MFA 2013 Photography, Video and Related Media) based on the Turkish melodramas he repeatedly watched during his childhood. The artist uses detailed models from the original films to produce richly colored, domestic tableaux critiquing stereotypical household expectations and traditional family values.

Exhibition

Interior Motives

SVA Flatiron Gallery

Reception