Curated by Samir Ceric

BEN YOUNG / ELEANOR LYNDSAY-FYNN / JACKY TSAI/ DOROTHY M. YOON / SAMUEL JACKSON / SARAH GWYER/ SARAH MAPLE / SHONA DAVIES

As part of our yearly summer program featuring recently graduated artists, White Box is proud to introduce SaLon at WHITE BOX: UK’s Future Greats in NY. This exhibition showcases emerging, innovative artwork from London’s SaLon Gallery’s annual hunt for the UK’s most talented graduates from the most prominent art schools such as The Royal Academy of Arts, Goldsmiths, Glasgow School of Art and The Rushkin School of Drawing and Fine Art.

Through the use of traditional methods and materials, the selected artists explore a new attitude; a bias that may evolve into a generational and much awaited new ‘British’ sensibility. This resilient insight reflects the cosmopolitan cross-population and global system of jet-setting foreign art school attendees, where several nationalities, side by side with a long established immigrant and local populae, matriculate to train at today’s most elite British Schools. This new cultural hybrid, which in itself may invigorate, muddle, mix or surprise, vests the real revelation that this exhibition contains. Will each MFA grad bring a dash of freshness, influencing the locals and vice-versa or will it all, under market and peer pressure, produce a bland, easily marketable multicultural product? The show will both attest to and test these educational premises. WBX’s intention to present UK’s ‘Future Greats’ is not without an element of vindication. WBX aims to measure, with the rigor of an exhibition, and present these manifestations of the zeitgeist which, is so clearly and inevitably influenced by the marketplace. This show will also serve as a barometer of the increasingly globalized institution and thus, our local academic art sphere- by now so systematized into serving the ‘establishment’- by analogy, be brought into question.

This exhibition consists of photography, painting, embroidery, and found object sculptures. The artists featured include Sarah Maple, Jacky Tsai and Samuel Jackson. Maple recently claimed the noted ‘4 New Sensations’ award, launched by U.K.’s Channel 4 and the Saatchi Gallery and, has been labeled as the heir to Tracey Emin’s throne by The London Independent. Tsai, who recently collaborated with the legendary Alexander McQueen, was honored by having several of her works featured in McQueen’s Italian fashion show. Dynamic, successful and multicultural, these young UK art school graduates are collectively redefining the future of contemporary art.