In 2026 it is said the rat supremacy in New York has ended. Poison has worked. Birth control has worked. Is the sign of fewer rats a sign of prosperity? A sign of an anesthetized environment, a cleaner society, a richer civilization—one without the melodrama of vermin sociality? 

Does the rat need to be summoned back? Does art need to be live? Does art need to be evil? Does the rat need to be evil? Does the evil rat live an evil life? Does art live as an evil rat? 

Starting from scratch and by scratching, the live artist keeps a toy close: a rat. To the artist’s surprise, the rat is a god pulling strings that connect their marionette body. In Ratatouille, the rat, Remy, sits atop Alfredo’s head, tugging strings on instinct and whispering his ideas into form. The artist is the proxy, and the rat makes meaning, guiding their limbs into action.

The evil rat exists in a shadow world that acknowledges life as an impoverished form. In the artist’s studio, detritus collects in abundance. Art is the excess that makes us trip up when we speak, when Remy pulls too hard. Art is the broken open wound, the unhealed schism. We see a tail disappear into the wall, and through here, an expanse is almost in sight.

Anders Dickson (b. 1988) lives and works in New York. He attended the Staatliche Akademie der bildenden Kuenste, Karlsruhe, and the Städelschule, Frankfurt am Main. His work has been exhibited at KAYOKOYUKI, Tokyo; Wschód Gallery, New York; Sgomento Zurigo, Zurich; CAPC, Bordeaux; Pakt//, Amsterdam; Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt; 15 Orient, New York; Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne; Vleeshal, the Netherlands; and Tanya Leighton, Berlin. Dickson is member and co-founder of the Netherlands-based artist initiative Root Canal.

Ian Miyamura (b. 1991) lives and works in New York. He holds an MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art (2019) and a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2013). Solo exhibitions include They Learned to Look Up and Down, Bureau, New York (2025); Chaos Spawn, François Ghebaly, Los Angeles (2024); Bureau at Paris Internationale (2023); and OCTOBER 31, 4th Ward Project Space, Chicago (2022). Group presentations include: Greater New York, MoMA PS1, New York (2026); Everything looks dark now, Bel Ami, Los Angeles (2026); Fifteen-Year Anniversary Exhibition, Bureau, New York (2025); Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue, Adams and Ollman, Portland, OR (2025); Invisible Architecture, Ralph Arnold Gallery, Chicago (2023); My Condolences, M+B Gallery, Los Angeles (2023); A Tournament of Lies, The Wassiac Project (2022). Miyamura’s work has been discussed on Angelic Transmissions (East Village Radio) and in Cultured, Diva Corp USA, Hyperallergic, and White Hot Magazine.

Olivia Reavey (b. 1998) is a photographer working between her studio and darkroom. Found objects become weapons of intervention in her work—they penetrate, distort, and sometimes mirror the body, as if beauty and corrosion were two versions of the same gesture. Intimacy, violence, and risk intermingle in a subconscious landscape where found materials serve as tools of intrusion and transformation. Her jaggedly cut, handmade darkroom prints live as singular objects in their own right, solidifying the materiality of the work both ideologically and literally. Olivia has recently exhibited with Thomas Erben, New York; City State, Miami; and Center of Photography Woodstock, New York. Olivia obtained her MFA in photography from Yale University in May 2026 and took part in the Skowhegan residency program in summer 2026.