Oops! Unfortunately...
Aug 21, 2025 - Sep 3, 2025
13 Grattan St, #402, Brooklyn, NY, 11206
Artists
Arom Ju
Benjamin Truong
Catherine Haverkamp
Diane Tenerelli
Elaine Chao
Ella De Leon Detlefsen
Griffin Silbey
Jingsong Yu
J Moon
Kate Greenwell
Katie Dobberpuhl
Kiera Stuart
Marlena Warmack
Meicheng Chi
Nayoung Kim
Nicholas D'Angelo
Reiko Numao
Sayo Watanabe
Sonny Moore
Yiwan Ji
Curators
Key (Qi) Ling
Yuehan Ma
New York – A Space is pleased to present Oops! Unfortunately…, a group exhibition that asks what happens to the works that were never wanted. Too anime, not refined enough, too strange, or simply dismissed without a word—these are the pieces that professors frowned at, curators rejected, or artists themselves abandoned before they ever saw light. By gathering them here, the exhibition resists erasure, demonstrating that rejection does not equate to disappearance.
The exhibition opens with fragmented portraits of the self. Downward View by Kate Greenwell maps tattoos across awkwardly posed figures, rendering skin as a vessel for cultural inscription. Reiko Numao’s The Traveler, drawing from shamanistic traditions of Northern Europe and Mongolia, presents the mother as both guardian and spiritual guide—an image of unseen bonds guiding the soul inward. Self-doubt surfaces in Jingsong Yu’s Rather an AI Painting… Than Yours, named after a father’s remark that an AI painting would be worth more than his own. Here, persistence in “valueless” art becomes defiance against dismissal.
Introspection turns visceral in Katie Dobberpuhl’s Self Laid Bare, where sketchbook notes are transferred onto fabric “skin,” identity literally stitched into flesh. Ella De Leon Detlefsen’s Spectre echoes Radiohead’s discarded Bond theme, transforming rejection into beauty drawn from haunting sound. Velocity and exhaustion define Nicholas D’Angelo’s Over It, where layered prints trap the body in restless motion. In Elaine Chao’s Soul Ferry, a pixiu escorts the dead across vigil-lit waters—an image too strange for themed open calls but vivid in its symbolism.
Every day detritus becomes record in Sayo Watanabe’s assemblages As the Pandemic Continues and Blue Like the Ocean that Drowns. Glove, pill bottle, deodorant cap—objects of survival turned into fragile monuments. Material chance takes sculptural form in Diane Tenerelli’s Weirdo 1, a glazed porcelain that embraces asymmetry and imperfection. Griffin Silbey’s Scales reworks a discarded pool toy into a meditation on nostalgia and obsolescence, memory buoyant yet destined to sink.
Language, misread and remade, animates Benjamin Truong’s Seahorse Friends, where two creatures—one real, one invented—play on childhood literalism. Catherine Haverkamp’s Circumscription stages women’s dual presence in domestic interiors, oscillating between languid stillness and ghostly exclusion.
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In J Moon’s Piece of Me series, recycled e-waste fused with paint, copper wire, and human hair forms reliquaries of technological dependence—both personal and collective. Dream logic unfolds in Meicheng Chi’s Tiger in a Wet Dream, recalling childhood visions of tigers wandering suburban streets, fragile yet majestic. Marlena Warmack’s The Worst Day of Your Life (So Far) traps Bart Simpson in eternal repetition, humor collapsing into despair. Rejection becomes armor in Kiera Stuart’s We regret to inform you, where torn rejection letters skin a ceramic body in resilience.
Digital nostalgia animates Nayoung Kim’s Can U Feel The Beat!? and Rapture!, playful nods to internet culture balanced uneasily between creativity and commodification. Surreal everyday moments surface in Arom Ju’s Rainbow Recipe and A Slice of Somewhere, once dismissed as “too illustrative,” now seen as portals into the fantastical ordinary. Cultural adolescence is archived in Yiwan Ji’s 2nd Year Syndrome, a book collecting songs and stories of a misunderstood state between reality and ideals. Finally, Sonny Moore’s Provision For The Flesh charts minimalist forms infused with fandom aesthetics, new images of identity born from digital spaces.
Together, the works in Oops! Unfortunately… trace the afterlife of art deemed too strange, too personal, or simply not wanted. They remind us that rejection does not erase value—only delays its visibility. Here, what was once sidelined is given space: not to be redeemed, but simply to exist.
Installation View
