Installation view, ‘We Were Already Gone,’ Hauser & Wirth New York, 22nd Street, 2021.© Hauser & Wirth. Courtesy Hauser & Wirth. Photo: Thomas Barratt.

We Were Already Gone

Hauser & Wirth

May 14 through June 5, 2021

By WM, May 2021 

Beginning 14 May, Hauser & Wirth New York will present ‘We Were Already Gone’, an exhibition at its West 22nd Street location in the Chelsea Arts District, organized in collaboration with Hunter College. 

Curated by graduate students in Hunter’s Department of Art & Art History, this exhibition will showcase the work of artists currently enrolled in the school’s MFA Program in Studio Art. ‘We Were Already Gone’ spotlights the diversity and holistic approach that have situated Hunter uniquely among American institutions devoted to higher education in the arts. The show will present an array of works across mediums, with sculpture, painting, and videos that confront the global cultural and political reckoning underway.

Chris Berntsen, Erotohistoriography, Riis 1955/2017, 2019. Archival Pigment Print, 76.2 x 101.6 cm / 30 x 40 in. Photo: Courtesy of the Artist.

Hunter College’s acclaimed MFA Program in Studio Art is deeply rooted in and nourished by its engagement with the cultural ecology of New York City. For decades, its alumni and faculty have helped to shape the landscape of contemporary art, making significant contributions to the field as artists, critics, curators, and educators.

Hauser & Wirth’s ongoing collaboration with Hunter College reflects the gallery’s longstanding commitment to arts education and community building.

Artist Firelei Báez, Hunter College MFA ‘10 says, ‘When I went to Hunter, it was this wild thunder dome of possibilities. It was a place for unlearning all the things I mastered before, of really examining and recontextualizing my place in the Western canon. And I’m very grateful to professors like Susan Crile, Paul Ramirez Jonas, and Nari Ward, for teaching me to expand beyond and acknowledge and revel in the stories in the places I grew up in, and to give room and open new doorways for people after me, just like they did. Following in their footsteps. I’m very grateful and proud to be an alum.’

Shauna Steinbach, Diverter, 2020. Magic, Sculpt, artificial flowers, cellophane, concrete, acrylic, plastic, 50.8 x 76.2 x 25.4 cm / 20 x 30 x 10 in. Photo: Courtesy of the Artist.

About ‘We Were Already Gone’

‘We Were Already Gone’ was conceived and curated by the students of Hunter’s graduate class, ‘Curate, Create, Critique,’ taught by curator and professor Joachim Pissarro. For the exhibition, the participating students – who come from both the Art History and Studio Art departments – chose to focus upon the effects of the year 2020, with its global pandemic accompanied by political unrest, learning through a virtual sphere, and lack of human touch and connection.

Impacted individually and collectively by the turmoil of last year, the students found their organizing principle in Jacques Derrida’s term ‘hauntology,’ which refers to the persistent presence of the past in our current moment. The works on view in ‘We Were Already Gone’ form an invitation to assemble remnants of the past into a new foundation for a hopeful future.

Xinan (Helen) Ran, Know Tomorrow Know, 2019. Fabric, paint, tassel, polyester filling, 187.9 x 167.6 x 3 cm / 74 x 66 in x 1.2 in. Photo: Courtesy of the Artist.

At Hauser & Wirth’s building on West 22nd Street, the exhibition will unfold across the gallery’s clerestoried fifth floor space. The paintings, sculptures, drawings, and video works on view explore questions of memory and notions of the avatar or virtual self, and survey the effects of absence and isolation. Some of the participating artists are contemplating the past, using their work to define the ways memory shapes life in the present day. 

Others are questioning how – and if – we can individually and collectively dismantle outdated, inherited systems in order to rebuild anew.

‘We Were Already Gone’ was curated by Hunter MA and MFA students Dana Notine, Jonas Albro, Daniel Berman, Dante Cannatella, Anna Cone, Sarah Heinemann, Mercedes Llanos, Amorelle Jacox, Liza Lacroix, Kimberly Nam, Joseph Parra, Lorraine Robinson, and Sigourney Schultz. WM