The California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) is pleased to present Proxy, Chimera, Oracle, an exhibition featuring new works by thirty-four artists, recent graduates of the School of Art’s MFA programs in Art, Photography & Media, and Art & Technology. The exhibition is curated by Nora N. Khan at CalArts@Reef, a cultural platform in Downtown LA that connects artists, performers, and theorists from CalArts with the city’s publics and currents. On view are sculptures, films, paintings, and a range of hybrid, mixed media works, many of which take up afterimages as material. A bright light, prolonged exposure: an afterimage is the lingering visual after overstimulation of the eye. A visual sensation lingers though the source has been removed: the memory of a structure, a presence, taking form as imprints, traces, shadows, and blur. Proxy, Chimera, Oracle presents aesthetic and imaginal strategies for living in the wake, after homes, communal spaces, safe havens, and any semblance of certainty have been violently evacuated. At first, we see loss and absence: Grooves in concrete where an L.A. shopping plaza once stood. Faded billboards on the highway. Signs with their letters ripped out and rearranged. Thresholds of houses in the last village of its kind. Scaffolding without support. Collected, these thirty-five artworks respond to personal and systemic losses and thefts, psychic debts, enclosures and narrow framings through strategic redirection. The artists use proxies to buy time or stretch feeling and memory: body doubles, rehearsal architectures, floor maps of ruins, protocols, branded limbs, scores in ash and smoke, hair stitched through skin and watched on screen. They chart paths out of grief and loss by staging chimeric transmutation: alien embryos, molted snakeskin braids, invented mythological icons, suspended slime and chocolate and water. Religious figures are pulled apart and put back together again. Finally, and perhaps most optimistically, they invent oracles and predictive models, forecast future chaos to warn the present, score performances that should be, and divine through algorithmic augury and games without ends in sight. PARTICIPATING ARTISTS: Adriana DiNapoli, AJaeCea Carlie x Luisa Pinzon, Alexandra Pasquale, Anatola Araba, Catherine Wang, Chinning Liu, Dar San Agustin, Erika Keck, Hengyu Wang, Ione Wang, Jade Smrz, Jake Thornton, Zengjie Chai, Jayson Mittman, Jeffrey Martín, Kiko Thomas, Masha Sheinina, Mei Gong, Meixi Liu, Michele Lorusso, Pedro Alejandro Verdin, Raymond Ren, Rica Kagawa, Rocky Hayden, Sining Zhu, Siqi Fan, Siyona Ravi, Smonica (Si Ming) Lin, Sophia Le Fraga, Taylor Thomas, Ti lee, Yanying Zhu, Yulya Valuy x Dasha Avdeeva, Yuqiao Zhang Meet us for two public programming weekends, October 18th and 19th, and November 8th and 9th, where faculty, alumni, and special guests will be staged in moments of confrontation and intimacy, towards possibilities of surrender. Events include artist talks, theoretical lectures, discursive panels, performances, readings, curatorial walkthroughs, and discussion on artworks timely and timeless. Poetic oracular interventions by Carribean Fragoza, Muriel Leung, Matias Veigener, Brian Evenson, Gabrielle Civil, Kini Sosa (Critical Studies, 2024), and Rowland Smith III (Critical Studies, 2024). Chimerical sounds by Stanley Zappa (Critical Studies, 2025). Organized by curatorial researcher Erica Min, (Critical Studies, 2025). The exhibition publication gathers the secret, hidden writings and texts central to each artist’s practice, along with buried material drawn from the curatorial process and rich, wide-ranging conversations about ideas that made Proxy, Chimera, Oracle possible. The publication is edited by Nora N. Khan and Erica Min, designed by Becca Lofchie (Graphic Design 2020), with support of CalArts@Reef Graphic Design residents Valerie Costa (Graphic Design 2025) and Ingrid Yu-Ju Tai (Graphic Design 2025). The annual CalArts postgrad show is intended to provide context and visibility for recent graduates, as well as an opportunity to connect and to share their work with the larger Los Angeles art community. Previous iterations of the exhibition have been organized by Malik Gaines, Meghan Gordon, Sarah Lehrer-Graiwer, Andrew McNeely, Audrey Min, Catherine Taft, and Aurora Tang, among other notable curators. ABOUT CALARTS SCHOOL OF ART CalArts was founded in 1961 and opened in 1969 as the first institution of higher learning in the United States specifically for students interested in the pursuit of degrees in all areas of visual and performing arts. The CalArts educational philosophy is based on close collegial interaction between faculty and students. This approach combines rigorous instruction with individualized attention, a process that empowers students to define their own personal objectives—and to develop and refine their own distinctive artistic voices. A sanctuary for cross-disciplinary training, the School of Art holds four historically prominent graduate programs - in Art, Photography and Media, Art and Technology, and Graphic Design - and actively promotes both the creative environment and the intellectual context for artistic experimentation. The Post Graduate MFA exhibition is a 25+ year old tradition where graduates showcase their work in a public setting. https://calarts.edu/ @CalArts About CalArts@Reef Located on the top floor of the Reef building at Broadway and Washington, our 20,000 square foot space hosts a range of exhibitions, productions, workshops, and experimental programming. At the center of the program is the CalArts@Reef Residency, which provides time, space, and support for recently graduated CalArts alumni to develop and share work beyond the academic environment. The Reef 1933 S Broadway, 12th Floor Los Angeles CA 90007