A residency-then-exhibition Artists: Clare Hu, Tianyi Sun, and Shaan Ken Rao

398 West Street, New York, NY 10014 Residency: July 21 – September 16, 2026 Exhibition: September 17 – October 17, 2026 Opening Reception with the artists: Thursday, September 17, 2026 | 6-8 PM

Eli Klein Gallery is pleased to present Best by 07/21/2026, a residency-then-exhibition featuring artists Clare Hu, Tianyi Sun, and Shaan Ken Rao, opening on its own expiration date. Following At-Will Adaptation (2024), the gallery’s residency program returns this year for its second installment, running from July 21st and culminating in a three-artist exhibition on Thursday, September 17th. The three artists, working in various mediums such as sculpture, weaving, painting, and photography, will create entirely new bodies of work using Eli Klein Gallery as their studio. The gallery will be open to the public during normal business hours throughout the duration of the residency.

“Can the concept of the human survive discovering how the “sausage” of us is actually made, what we really look and smell like at the cellular level?” This question, raised by the writer and scholar Sophie Lewis in her catalog essay “New Wombs for Old Men” of the New Museum’s inaugural exhibition “New Humans,” challenges the default practice of separating the maker from their associated defecations during the formation of a public-facing identity. On a metaphorical and non-visceral level, contemporary art’s birth-giving process today resembles an ectogenesis, with the “sausage-making” process susceptible to both curated previews and packaged commercialization. An artist’s studio is only alive when it breathes and excretes, and more so when the discarded substances are studied, categorized, archived, and recycled.