Morgan Lehman Gallery Exhibition in New York Showcases Work by BU MFA Painting Alums

Morgan Lehman Gallery Exhibition in New York Showcases Work by BU MFA Painting Alums
This Time Tomorrow, on view from July 11 through August 2, features the work of 15 artists from Boston University School of Visual Arts’ 2024 Master of Fine Arts Painting program.
For the third year in a row, Boston University College of Fine Arts School of Visual Arts is proud to present a recent alumni exhibition in New York City’s Morgan Lehman Gallery. This Time Tomorrow, on view from July 11 through August 2, features artwork by 15 artists from BU School of Visual Arts’ 2024 Master of Fine Arts (MFA) Painting program. The cohort has developed a distinctive bond through frequent exchanges of communal meals, ideas, jokes, supplies, and knowledge.
This past spring, Sally Morgan Lehman, Owner of Morgan Lehman Gallery, visited the MFA Painting program, ranked #6 nationally by U.S. News & World Report, and generously conducted two days of studio visits with the second-year painting students, now recent alums participating in This Time Tomorrow. Lehman also gave a talk open to all studio MFA programs about working with a gallery, offering advice and tips that the students found exceptionally valuable.
This Time Tomorrow marks the time the MFA Painting Class of 2024 officially go their separate ways, leaving behind a record of this fleeting––but wholly transformative––moment of togetherness. Grounded in a shared education and commitment to painting, the exhibiting artists collectively reflect on two existential questions posed by The Kinks in their exhibition’s namesake song: “Where will we be? What will we know?”
Exploring the perception of time, Huakai Chen, Stephanie Petet, and Yingxue Daisy Li feel their way through abstraction by allowing each painting to develop at its own pace. Over varying durations, these artists cultivate inventive forms, responding with both intense grit and thoughtful touch. This intuitive balance activates a present state of continuity that radiates through their substrates and beyond.

Sebastian Huakai Chen
Window V, 2023
oil on panel
12 x 9 inches

Stephanie Petet
Sharp Thoughts, 2024
oil and collage on panel
30 x 24 inches

Yingxue (Daisy) Li
Kiss II, 2023
oil on Linen
27.7 x 27.5 inches
Abbi Kenny, James Gold, and Sidharth Shah reference the quantifiable aspects of time, carefully measured through sequence and duration. As Kenny sources imagery from cookbooks and Gold from instruction manuals, they precisely render cultural histories in contemporary circulation, while Shah drafts the emergence of a fragile future impacted by extinction. Each artist considers the time and labor implicated by their sources, developing mechanically-minded processes that complement their investigation of the handmade.

James Gold
Framework, 2024
egg tempera, India ink, acrylic
gouache, and pigmented gesso on
panel
34 x 47 inches

Abbi Kenny
Clam Bake and Corn Boy, 2024
acrylic, acrylic gouache, molding paste, glass flakes, pumice gel, paper, and cellulose on canvas
40 x 28 inches

Sidharth Shah
Untitled, 2023
graphite on packing paper
35 x 52.5 inches
Several artists in this exhibition have an innate sensitivity to image-making unbound by the conventions of pictorial space. Through varied applications of assemblage, Julia McGehean, Sayak Mitra, and Jacob Salzer cultivate a dialogue between the fixed identity of material reality and the intangible. Casually sourced objects are supported by a painterly language intertwining the acts of thinking, speaking, and seeing.

Julia McGeahan
Typo I (did you mean: can’t), 2023
oil on panel, can, hanger, buttons
18 x 18 inches

Sayak Mitra
Dableu Colour, 2023
24 x 30 inches
oil, graphite, pastel, acrylic on canvas

Jacob Salzer
Found Cans, Stolen Drawing, Stolen Hat, First Date, 2023
oil/acrylic and found material
on panel
24 x 48 inches
Conceptually, Natalie Conway and Téa Chai Beer eloquently compress visual information, building gestural portraits of mind and body through incremental layers of color and line. Conway sands down tactile beds of gesso to reveal underlying text and texture, while Beer composites moving figures to capture the multiplicity of the self in real time.

Natalie Conway
Codex I, 2024
plywood, canvas, acrylic gesso, acrylic paint, seashells.
6 x 4 x 1 inches

Téa Chai Beer
Imbrication, 2024
acrylic and colored pencil on poly
silk over painted stretcher bars
40 x 30 inches
Ellen Weitkamp, Sophie Thervil, Sarai Bustos, and Cody Robert Hook Bluett offer emotional interpretations of people and places that consciously expand beyond observable evidence. Their paintings, composed of subjective slippages that divest from their source, create direct suspensions between now, then, near, and far. Driven by intricate facets of the artist’s experience, each deliberate decision highlights articulate sensibilities in technical mark-making.

Ellen Weitkamp
February 21st, 2023: 5:18 PM, 2024
stone lithograph
14 x 11 inches

Sarai Bustos
It might not be the right way (night), 2024
oil on manta
23.5 x 17.75 inches

Sophie Thervil
*ManhattanI, 2024
oil on linen
24 x 18 inches

Cody Bluett
Enigma Altar: Clough and Kimbal Expedition, Mt. Washington, NH, 2024
oil, acrylic, and shellac on
carved wood panel
21.5 x 41.5 inches
This Time Tomorrow is simultaneously rooted in personal and collective histories; the artists interpret time by layering motifs of fragmentation, (re)construction, and wholeness with the fluidity of daily life. As they move together into a period of transience this exhibition renders the fullness of an unknown future as it gradually unfolds for 15 individuals–for now as one.
This Time Tomorrow
BU 2024 MFA Painting Graduates
July 11 – August 2, 2024 • Morgan Lehman Gallery
526 West 26th Street, Suite 410 New York, NY 10001 • Open Tuesdays through Saturdays, 11am to 6pm
A reception will be held on Thursday, July 11, from 6 to 8pm.
Featured Artists (all 2024 CFA graduates)
Téa Chai Beer • Cody Robert Hook Bluett • Sarai Bustos • Huakai Chen • Natalie Conway • James Gold • Abbi Kenny • Yingxue (Daisy) Li • Julia McGehean • Sayak Mitra • Stephanie Petet • Jacob Salzer • Sidharth Shah • Sophie Thervil • Ellen Weitkamp
visit morgan lehman gallery’s website

HELPING ALUMS LAUNCH THEIR ARTISTIC CAREERS
BU School of Visual Arts provides many intersectional opportunities for students to deepen their artistic and professional practices, including fostering important partnerships with well-regarded galleries and alternative art spaces, such as On Stellar Rays, 1969 Gallery, Anna Zorina Gallery, Ortega Y Gasset, Tiger Strikes Asteroid, and, for the past three years, Morgan Lehman Gallery in Chelsea.
Under the leadership of Josephine Halvorson, professor of art and chair of graduate studies in painting, collaborative exhibitions and other professional practice opportunities have become signature elements of the program, connecting current students, alumni, and professionals in the field.
Established in 1954, Boston University College of Fine Arts (CFA) is a community of artist-scholars and scholar-artists who are passionate about the fine and performing arts, committed to diversity and inclusion, and determined to improve the lives of others through art. With programs in Music, Theatre, and Visual Arts, CFA prepares students for a meaningful creative life by developing their intellectual capacity to create art, shift perspective, and think broadly. CFA offers a wide array of undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral programs, as well as a range of online degrees and certificates. Learn more at bu.edu/cfa.
Boston University College of Fine Arts School of Visual Arts prepares students to think seriously, to see critically, to make intensely, and to act with creative agency in the contemporary world. The School of Visual Arts merges the intensive studio education of an art school with the opportunities of a large urban university, and is committed to educating the eye, hand, and mind of the artist. With rigorous graduate and undergraduate fine art programs that are rooted in studio practice, CFA School of Visual Arts provides highly motivated students with programs in the bedrock disciplines, of the fine arts coupled with a vast array of electives and liberal arts opportunities.
The Master of Fine Arts (MFA) program in Painting at Boston University College of Fine Arts School of Visual Arts (SVA) promotes the discipline in its varied manifestations as a fundamental form of artistic expression. At its core, the program is studio-driven, with rigorous expectations about each student’s focused commitment to their individual artistic practice. SVA is an established leader in the professional arts with five MFA degrees. The MFA in Painting is ranked #6 nationally (US News & World Report).
Morgan Lehman Gallery specializes in promoting the work of emerging and mid-career American artists working in a wide spectrum of creative media, with a focus on women practitioners, as well as artists who live and work in the New York City area. While so many have fled New York in recent years, Morgan Lehman honors the dedication and tenacity of those artists who have chosen to make this city their home and continue to keep making their work here, despite the many challenges this poses.
In addition to its regular exhibition programming, Morgan Lehman Gallery also participates in select art fairs in major cities across the country each year, bringing its gallery programming to new audiences from around the globe. Further, the gallery offers collectors extensive art advisory services, which include helping clients acquire or de-accession artworks, custom artist commissioned works both private and public, and all other facets of collections management for corporations as well as individuals.