New York, NY—PS122 proudly presents Synthetic Traces, a project arriving in New York that exposes the fractures running through human and environmental systems and the aftermath of their collapse. On view from November 8 through 30, 2025, this exhibition brings together sculpture, video, and mixed-media works by artists Lite Zhang and Pavlos Liaretidis that underline how disaster unsettles the ground we stand on and reshapes the ways we remember, mourn, and persist.
Originating in Baltimore under the title (un)natural order, this project began as an exploration of the consequences of disasters, reflecting on events such as the 2024 collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Maryland and the 2023 Tempi train tragedy in Greece. For this second act, now in New York City, Synthetic Traces recontextualizes earlier works alongside new ones, positioning them within a city that has long absorbed global narratives while reckoning with its own history of rupture and renewal.
The exhibition unfolds across multiple themes: cultural displacement, environmental devastation, and the precarious balance between resilience and erasure. Both artists probe the fragile seams of human systems, from the infrastructures that collapse under the weight of disaster to the landscapes and animal lives scarred by fire, neglect, and exploitation. Their practices draw on strategies of displacement, memorialization, and estrangement, revealing how the synthetic and the natural, the human and the nonhuman, continually intersect and break apart. What emerges is a meditation on the sounds, memories, and matter left behind that insist collapse is never final but always carried forward as a reminder of care, vulnerability, and survival.Public Programming will extend these conversations, with more details below.
Synthetic Traces situates these urgent conversations in New York City, a landscape shaped by its own histories of devastation and repair. Here, resilience is not framed as victory, but as the fragile endurance of memory, matter, and community. The exhibition invites viewers to step into this terrain of fracture and perseverance, to witness how collapse leaves not only ruins but also echoes—traces that demand attention, care, and reckoning.
CONVERSATION WITH THE ARTISTS
Saturday, November 15, 4–6 PM
Join Lite Zhang and Pavlos Liaretidis for an open dialogue about the making of Synthetic Traces. Together, they will discuss how material, environment, and process intersect across their practices, questioning the balance between destruction and repair, and the ways in which art can hold the residue of loss while gesturing toward renewal.
PERFORMANCE BY LITE
Friday, November 21, 6–8 PM
Zhang revisits his work Plastic Pastoral, stepping back into the yellow artificial hay suit that bridges the synthetic and the natural. Moving within this second skin, part camouflage, part revelation, the artist enacts gestures that are at once deliberate and futile, echoing the absurdity of trying to “return to nature” while wrapped in plastic. The performance highlights the distance between what is real and what is manufactured, turning the pastoral ideal into a fragile, estranged image of our time.
About the Artists
Lite Zhang (b. 1998, Xi’an. China) is a New York and Baltimore-based interdisciplinary sculptor whose practice explores spatial dynamics, materiality, and audience interaction. Through installations incorporating found objects, formed sound, and tactile elements, Zhang creates multi-sensory environments that examine identity, memory, and social constructs. He holds an MFA in Sculpture from the Maryland Institute College of Art and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture (Class of 2025). His work has been presented at VisArts, Current Space, AREA 405, and SPCE Contemporary, including the 2023 solo exhibition Same Root 同根生 at Pinkard Gallery. Zhang is the recipient of awards including the Aesthetica Art Prize 2025, the Amalie Rothschild ’34 Rinehart Award, and the 21st Annual Leadership Award.
Pavlos Liaretidis (b. 1999, Thessaloniki, Greece) is a New York–based interdisciplinary sculptor whose practice spans installation, printmaking, and drawing to examine how material, space, and context shape human experience. Informed by his Greek heritage, his work weaves cultural references, historical undercurrents, and contemporary realities into environments that are at once architectural and deeply affective. His installations, shown across Greece, Baltimore, and New York, invite encounters that are both symbolic and visceral, reflecting on systems of memory, resilience, and vulnerability. Liaretidis received his MFA in Sculpture from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2024 and his BFA Integrated Master’s from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in 2022, and in 2025 was awarded a fellowship in the NYFA IAP Mentoring Program in New York.
About the Curator
Alfonso Sanchez Herrera Lasso (b. 2000, Mexico City, Mexico) is a curator and emerging arts professional working at the intersection of contemporary art, design, and architecture. Based in London, his practice explores how space, storytelling, and materiality shape our understanding of the urban landscape. An MFA graduate of the Maryland Institute College of Art, he has held curatorial, production, and gallery roles in Mexico, the United States, and the United Kingdom. These include assistant curator at Museo de Arte de Querétaro and the Art Collectors Athenaeum in partnership with the Art Museum of the Americas–Organization of American States. Recent projects include DISJUNCTION (Making Space Bmore, 2025), (un)natural order (Atrium Artspace, 2025), and This Is Not Your Grave (Eubie Blake National Jazz and Cultural Center, 2024).
For further information, please contact Alfonso Sanchez Herrera Lasso at alfonso.maqro@gmail.com or PS122 directly.
Digital BrochurePhotos Taken By: Mickey Aloisio
