Max Hooper Schneider presents “Scavenger” at 125 Newbury in Tribeca, his first solo exhibition in New York. The project is structured as a laboratory of hybrid ecologies, assembling engineered environments from salvaged matter, fabricated organisms, and vernacular debris to examine how objects and classification systems behave under conditions of transformation and decay.
The installation centers on vitrined habitats and outdoor assemblages conceived as dynamic systems rather than static sculpture. Materials such as coral, teeth, crystals, plasma gas, and mass-market detritus are organized into microcosms that stage succession, corrosion, fossilization, and preservation. Among the tableaux are an oversized cookie form that leaches oil into an archipelago of copper-plated toy animals; a crusted relief where barnacles and dollhouse furniture encase miniature screens showing burning sculptures; a nocturnal grove of bricolaged refuse suspended with lantern-like capsules; and burned aquaria reconstituted as copper-dendrite reefs.
Hooper Schneider describes the exhibition as “a set of conditions without a plot,” positioning the works closer to open systems than to narrative display. The presentation reframes natural-history museology as speculative apparatus: vitrines, taxonomies, and dioramas are redeployed as instruments to register entropy, resilience, and mutation. The result is a series of test environments in which organic and industrial residues cohabit, prompting close, sustained looking rather than episodic spectacle.
The artist’s methodology draws on training in both art and the life sciences. Studio procedures adapt techniques from landscape and marine studies, while the material vocabulary—manufactured plastics, metallized surfaces, domestic miniatures, and biological remnants—underscores a sustained interest in how culture and nature are co-produced. Rather than illustrating environmental discourse, the works model processes (oxidation, accretion, petrification) that make legible the temporalities of damage and repair.
Hooper Schneider was born in Los Angeles and studied Landscape Architecture at Harvard Graduate School of Design, with earlier degrees in Urban Design and Biology from New York University and additional study in marine biology and entomology. His work has been shown at UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, MO.CO Montpellier, and the Hammer Museum, and in group exhibitions at Centre Pompidou-Metz, Schinkel Pavillon, Leeum Museum of Art, Kistefos Museum, and the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris. His work is held in public and private collections including the Hammer Museum, MOCA Los Angeles, the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, the Rubell Museum, Fondation Lafayette, and the Fonds d’art contemporain de la Ville de Genève. Recognitions include the BMW Art Journey Prize and the Schmidt Ocean Institute Prize.
“Scavenger” is presented by 125 Newbury, a 3,900-square-foot project space founded by Arne Glimcher at 395 Broadway, whose program alternates thematic group exhibitions with focused solo presentations. The exhibition coincides with Hooper Schneider’s participation in the 12th SITE SANTA FE International, curated by Cecilia Alemani.
Venue and dates: 125 Newbury, 395 Broadway, Tribeca, New York — September 12 to October 25, 2025. Related program: SITE SANTA FE International, “Once Within a Time” — on view through January 12, 2026.
