Tribeca Ball, Art Academy's Elegant Party Scene and Studio Tour All in One

Daria Matkova, left, and Jessica Libor took turns photographing each other at the New York Academy of Art's Tribeca Ball on April 20. Photo: Carl Glassman/Tribeca Trib

The New York Academy of Art held its annual Tribeca Ball on April 20, opening doors to four floors of studios and the 100 MFA candidates whose widely diverse paintings, sculptures, drawing and prints reflect what the school describes as the “technical rigor and contemporary relevance” of its teaching. The elegant event, a benefit for the 44-year-old Academy, is also, as Vogue dubbed it, “one of downtown’s most singular soirees.” Guests make their way from one floor of studios to the next, each level a party scene and serious art tour packed into one.

Photos by Carl Glassman/Tribeca Trib

The Tribeca Ball dinner honored actor Alan Cumming, and celebrated “44 years of extraordinary support and advancement of the Academy” by Eileen Guggenheim and Russell Wilkinson, board chair and trustee. “Their unwavering dedication and generosity,” said Academy president Paul Provost, “have sustained this institution, nurtured generations of artists, and ensured that our rigorous studio traditions continue to thrive.”

During the event, some of the artists (below) talked to the Trib about their work. The comments have been edited for brevity and clarity. Photographs by Carl Glassman/Tribeca Trib

BECKY SCHUMAN

My art comes from me realizing the world is ending. My climate grief is the worst it’s ever been, and at the same time I’m a complete biophilic. I go outside and I love the world. I love the birds, I love nature, and so painting these images is the only way I can deal with all this climate grief.

ALEXANDRA YING

Because we are increasingly separated by social media and the digital world, I wanted to build bodies of work that, through the abstraction of movement, portraits and expressions, show how we can connect with an object in the world instead of just through the digital world. I became a swimmer two years ago and I had to learn how to adapt from breathing through air to breathing through water. I wanted the work to be universal, I wanted everyone to be part of it, to just have the expression of inhaling, exhaling, holding the breath and readjust to have the new rhythm for a new environment.

ISABELLA RONCHETTI

Painting has posed a tremendous challenge to me because here I am making a luxury product for a market and how can I acknowledge that from within the structure in which I'm working. So now I’m making paintings that are squishing against the fourth wall saying hey, I’m here. I’m stuck in this canvas. I am paint. I am a rectangle, but I’m also a teddy bear, a balloon. Balloons are a symbol of freedom and here they are stuck in a box. They’re stuck in the painting itself. You have this symbol of naive childhood freedom that’s confined by the restrictions of the medium in which it's being portrayed.

CHARLOTTE ESSEX

Trees have been my focus for the last year. I’ve done other things, but this has been my deep dive, my interest as a place. These are redwoods, in a space I’ve always felt really comfortable in.  For me it’s psychological as well as just a spiritual place. I’m really interested in depicting how it feels to be in that space. It’s beautiful but there are also obstacles. So I’m trying to navigate that limitation of space.

YARUK MEHMOOD

My work begins from a metaphor rooted in my cultural and religious understanding of the soul and the body. In Islamic tradition, at the very moment of death, when the soul is about to leave the body it is described as “if a piece of muslin cloth were placed over thorns and then pulled.” I think about this image, the tension between softness and resistance, and the way threads strain, catch, and begin to tear. That sensation of pressure and rupture becomes a foundation for how I approach figures. I make this work as if it’s the only expression I have left that hasn’t been corrupted. If I stop, it doesn’t go away, it stays with me. I can’t ignore it, and I can’t rest until it takes form.

ANGEL

I’m very inspired by New York City, and performance. I’m an actress, I used to be a dancer, so I’ve done a lot of different things, and I’m a multimedia artist. [At left] Her name is Starr and she’s the star of the show. I drew her first and I just felt like she had to be brought to life and made bigger. [At right] Her name is Bare Naked and she’s just about being yourself. 

DANIEL HUGHES

I’m a Southern Baptist and one of my paintings [left] was inspired by the feeling of sitting in church pews. Each figure as you go further back gets more abstracted. But then all the figures are possibilities of who I could have become within that community. So I'm holding onto some things as we get closer to the figure up front of the lights. As a gay man I’m trying to figure out what are the positives, what are the negatives, what can I hold on to, what can I love about the church. 

GIORGI POPIASHVILI

I did digital projects mostly for 20 years and now I’m moving to painting and fine arts in general. So that’s basically the main transition that is happening with me and this work, painted on the screens of iMac computers, is an illustration of that transition. 

SIERRA MERDA

I paint people who society doesn’t expect to be loved or people who don’t also expect to be loved. I like to think that my work paves the way for differently abled or differently looking bodies and experience to step forward and enter this classical world of painting. That world normally is reserved for very few privileged types found in museums, depicting white nude ladies rather than everybody else that walks this planet. So I search for beauty where it’s not thought to be beautiful, where a lot of the time it hurts, where it’s bruised, where it’s lived, where it’s embodied.

KORBYN CARLETON

I’m really interested in the lack of body literacy in today’s women, the understanding of different signals that your body gives you, and just being in tune with the natural cycles and natural rhythms of life, specifically for women. That’s really important because of our cyclical nature and the ovulation cycle. And so I have braids in my work as a strong motif for me. Each strand represents mind, body and spirit being woven together.

MARCUS VENEGAS

I love how masculinity submits itself to vulnerability and the universal experience of romance, but through an autobiographical lens of being young and queer. I allow my body of work to be sensitive and emotional and I think my pastel allows me to do that. I take my craft very seriously so to be able to do that is honestly a privilege and it’s a celebration of queer art at the same time. 

RIHAN ELSADENY

Being a parent inspired this series, “Beneath the Gown.” It shows a number of kids inside adult gowns. Which kid is going to poke out of an adult—the innocent, the nasty, the nice—depends on the moment that you talk to him. And the scale is big so you can feel the presence of that adult in front of you, but then the kids are inside, one, two or three kids. We are amazing creatures. We should forgive each other for everything because we are a mixture. 

XI WU

This is very random but I’m drawing Lucifer from Milton’s “Paradise Lost.” And a sun doing something, I don’t know. I’m always drawing. I include notes sometimes from books. I was reading [art critic and art historian] Leo Steinberg earlier so I have some of his ideas down. It doesn’t exactly inspire my art. It’s just fun to think about.