Curated by
-
June 6, 2026
Friday, June 5, 6:30–7:00 PM
NARS Main Gallery
As part of our Art in Dialogue and the NARS Artists Present: An Offering for the Public series, NARS Foundation is pleased to present Oyster Piano Bar, a public program with Rowan van As, a Season II, 2026 artist-in-residence, organized by NARS Curatorial Fellow Vu Thien An (Thea) Nguyen.
Beginning at the NARS Foundation, Rowan van As activates Oyster Piano Bar through a collective walk toward 36th Street subway station. Constructed from wood, wire, tape, found materials, oysters, and a keyboard piano, the mobile structure exists somewhere between a moving oyster bar, a street sculpture, and a temporary stage.
The work unfolds through spontaneous encounters, conversations, sounds, oyster sharing, and shifting interactions with the surrounding urban environment. Visitors are invited to join the procession as the Oyster Piano Bar moves from the street, into the elevator, and toward the fourth-floor studio spaces, temporarily transforming ordinary moments of transit into a shared performative experience.
Fragments of the project also appear throughout the exhibition in the form of a sculptural video installation documenting the Oyster Piano Bar’s evolving presence within the city.
About the artist:
Rowan van As (1991, Goes, NL) is a Rotterdam-based visual artist whocreates installations, sculptures, and performances, often as social gestures.He studied at the Willem de Kooning Academy (2010–2014) and earned his MFA atSt. Lucas, Antwerp (2015–2016).He draws from everyday urban life, remixingfound images and objects into layered, surreal works that shift the meaning ofthe discarded. Food forms an intuitive part of his later practice — as materialand connector. From April to June 2026, he will be in residence in New York,developing a project on the city’s oyster history. His most ambitious projectto date is a functioning reinterpretation of a classic yellow cab, which heaims to bring to New York. His work explores the relative powerlessness of theindividual, seeking a poetic language that is playful, confrontational, andopen to dialogue.
About the Curatorial Fellow:
Vu Thien An (Thea) Nguyen is an emerging curator and art researcher based between New York and Hanoi. Her research considers how translation and communication operate within studio practice, tracing how ideas move across languages and forms of making. Grounded in care, her practice nurtures and presents evolving voices. She works as a facilitator and bridge-builder to bring together people, concepts, while responding to cultural narratives.
Recently, Nguyen curated Leah Liu's solo exhibition susurrus at the Chinese American Arts Council | Gallery 456 (New York), and co-curated Womb of Fire, a traveling exhibition and publication project featuring 100 works by Vietnamese and diasporic Vietnamese women and non-binary artists. She is part of Parsons School of Design, Design History and Practice Program Class of 2026 and currently serves as Curatorial Assistant to guest curator Phil Zheng Cai for the 2026 NYC-Based Artist Residency Program at Residency Unlimited.
Support for NARS programs is generously provided by:
.avif)
