After Form

Yue Yuan, Apocalypse, 2026. Oil on canvas panel, 24 x 20 inches.

After Form

September 20-October 18, 2026

Opening Reception:

Part 1 – September 20, 4:00–6:00 PM

Curated by Imogen Aukland, Curator & Community Affiliate

Artists: Melissa Callender, Anna Cho, Yoorim Ko, Malu Laet, Rita Nannini, Stephanie Silver, Barbara Sullivan, Yue Yuan

Drawing from the vibrant community of KUNSTRAUM’s Residency and Studio Membership programs, the 2026 Members' Exhibition brings together 13 distinct creative voices. Split into two back-to-back exhibitions - After Form followed by Sum of its Parts - the consecutive shows highlight the depth of artistic practice developing within the KUNSTRAUM community. Featuring a spectrum of works, Sum of its Parts examines the deconstruction and reconstruction of the human body, while After Form investigates the tension between structure and abstraction.  

After Form explores a fragile boundary between structure and disorder, mapping moments where rigid form breaks down, converges, and realigns. The exhibition contrasts serial geometry and visual clarity with the dissolution of line, shape, and object, drawing out distinctions between steadiness and chaos. Clean boundaries, continuous horizons, and unbroken lines are interrupted, spliced, and reassembled, moving constantly between representation and abstraction. 

In Yue Yuan’s Apocalypse, a shadowy figure fades into loose, swirling brushstrokes. The painting's composition surrenders its clarity, allowing the boundary between subject and space to melt away. Leaning further into abstraction, Yoorim Ko’s largescale mixed-media work Free Flower presents an almost cellular environment, where colorful organic forms bloom and melt into one another. Fluid, overlapping gestures of paint and oil pastel accumulate onto unstretched canvas. In both works, form is pushed to the point of dissolution. Breakdown of structure is brought into three-dimensional space through Malu Laet’s sculpture Draconic Antikythera Reliquary, where a mechanical apparatus is destabilized into a mass of wiring and luminous beading. Laet creates a speculative device with ambiguous function, and, much like both Yuan and Ko, works in material and compositional disruption. 

The works in After Form move between processes of abstraction and re-assembly. Rita Nannini’s photographs cut and reshape terrain, reimagining the depiction of landscape and traditional horizon lines. In La Piscina, a coastline is fragmented; broken down into sections and vertically aligned. Also using image, repetition, and fragmentation, Stephanie Silver’s sculptural wall works combine found tile with digitally printed ceramics. Fish + Dolphin Tile camouflages photographed aquatic imagery into the tile’s faux-stone patterning, blurring its recognizable form. Melissa Callender’s practice involves collecting snapshots of industrial and architectural remnants. Untitled Facade #2 contrasts raw edges with the infrastructural alignment of a wall’s brickwork. Printed and transferred to paper through gel medium, stills of a built environment are flattened into two-dimensions, re-emerging through pattern and shape.

Shape and subject are made fluid in Barbara Sullivan’s practice, which explores the outermost edges of representation. Anchored by a crowned figure and large pink bird, the composition of Fever Dream sits in a state of dreamlike unraveling, with form collapsing into itself through raw washes of paint and charcoal on raw canvas. Anna Cho gestures towards figuration in Darkness Chasing 6, where a small sketched figure stands engulfed by swaths of a stormy painted sky. Loose, expressive brushstrokes toe a line between definition and amorphousness. 

After Form uses line, gesture, and physical material to both construct and undo structure. Paint melts a figure’s outline, framing fragments a coastline, and heavy gearwork disappears into cybernetic sediment. The show zeroes in on the tipping point where an organized system breaks down and turns into abstraction. 

After Form and Sum of its Parts, the two chapters of KUNSTRAUM’s 2026 Members’ Show, will run consecutively from September 20 to November 8, 2026. Please join us on Sunday, September 20^th from 4:00-6:00 PM at KUNSTRAUM for the opening reception of After Form.

PART 1 – After Form, Members Show

Exhibition Dates: September 20th – October 11th, 2026

Opening Reception: Sunday, September 20th, 4:00 – 6:00 PM 

Closing Reception with Curator’s Tour: Sunday, October 11th, 4:00 - 6:00 PM 

PART 2 – Sum of its Parts, Members Show

Exhibition Dates: October 18th – November 8th, 2026

Opening Reception: Sunday, October 18th, 4:00 – 6:00 PM

Closing Reception with Open Studio: Sunday, November 8th, 4:00 – 6:00 PM

Address: KUNSTRAUM, 20 Grand Avenue, Loft 509, Brooklyn, NY

Visiting Hours: Thursday - Saturday, 12:00–6:00 PM, by appointment. 

Please email: curator@kunstraumllc.com to schedule your visit.

For press inquiries, images, or interview requests, contact: 

Imogen Aukland, Curator and Community Affiliate – curator@kunstraumllc.com