Eco-Social Realism
September 19 - December 19, 2026

Curated by Daniel Tucker

Biomaterials Working Group
Sébastien Derenoncourt
Sam Horowitz
Kaitlin Pomerantz

OPENING RECEPTION
Saturday September 19th, 1-5pm

​Part of the Eco-Social Series

Eco-Social Realism is part of a regional exhibition series growing out of the ongoing Eco-Social Series, co-sponsored by RAIR, Green Sun and Making Worlds Books since 2023. It brings together artworks exploring infrastructural and bioregional practices that visualise and embody the territorial scale of climate crisis — both its problems and its solutions. Exhibitions take place across multiple venues in the Philadelphia region in late 2026, including Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery at Haverford College, Rowan University Museum of Contemporary Art, Street Road Artists Space, TILT Institute, Big Ramp and RAIR.

Street Road will host work by The Biomaterials Working Group, Sébastien Derenoncourt, Sam Horowitz, and Kaitlin Pomerantz.

Image:  Kaitlin Pomerantz, Untitled (Rewilded Dollar, Viriditas Series, 3/13) , US dollars, paste, 2.61" x 6.14", 2025

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The Biomaterials Working Group (BWG), is an art and research collective based in Lenapehoking / Philadelphia. We share an interest in exploring sustainable alternatives to plastics and toxic materials conventionally used in studio art practices, as well as a broad curiosity about the transformative potential of everyday materials used in unconventional ways. Our various previous avenues of exploration include: algae-based bioplastics, bioconcrete, fermentation, natural pigments, kombucha leather, saltwater radio antennae, and more. BWG is Marcellus Armstrong, Elizabeth A. Shores, Cecilia McKinnon, Theo Loftis, and Jazmyn Crosby.

Sébastien Derenoncourt is a Haitian interdisciplinary artist who has been living and working in the U.S. for most of his adult life. During his childhood spent in Haiti and West Africa, he witnessed famines caused by the effects of soil erosion and degradation, desertification, severe droughts and coastal erosion. This lived experience has given him an intimate awareness of the effects of manmade climate change and environmental issues, which he brings to his conceptual work. His artistic practice is heavily research-based, and typically anchored in time arts practices such as video, sound and interactive media. He has also had an extensive career in commercial art and professional design; as an art director, creative director and user experience designer. Recently he has been studying the ramification of sea level rise and coastal erosion on the disappearance of historically, archeologically and culturally significant artifacts and geographies of the pre-colonial and colonial Atlantic coast of the United States; specifically the coastal wetlands and swamps which harbored marooned slaves and indigenous peoples.

Sam Horowitz is a futurist, mad scientist, Assistant Professor, and Sculpture Area Head at Rowan University in New Jersey. Horowitz has exhibited in solo shows at the Society for Domestic Museology in the Bronx, Point of Contact Gallery in Syracuse, and the Art Space in Beacon, NY. He has participated in group shows throughout the US, and earned degrees from Alfred University (MFA, ‘20) and Bard College (BA, ‘10). Horowitz has held a number of artist residencies, including those at Salem Art Works (NY), on Governors Island (NYC), and at Sloss Furnaces (AL), where he also served as Union Shop Steward. Since 2023, he teaches for RISD’s Continuing Education Department during the summer and winter sessions. ​Within Horowitz’s studio work, concepts of geology, state change, and philosophy merge and conform to question perspective and identity. Horowitz finds a balance between fine craft and found texture, playing carefully worked surfaces against those weathered by processes biological, meteorological, and industrial alike. He replicates these processes in the studio, creating artifacts from a thousand years ago, today.

Kaitlin Pomerantz is an interdisciplinary artist and educator based in Philadelphia and New York. Pomerantz works across forms with purposeful materials to learn about ecological relations under extractive systems. Pomerantz is the founder of MATTERS, an educational initiative connecting art and design materials to labor and land, supporting creative practices rooted in awareness, repair and care. Pomerantz’s work has been supported by Monument Lab, Pew Arts and Heritage, Philadelphia Mural Arts, Sachs Arts and Innovation and more. They have most recently shown work at Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery at Haverford College, Buoy Gallery in Maine and Automat in Philadelphia. Pomerantz has recently held residencies at Surf Point (Maine), the Church (Sag Harbor, NY) and Officina Stamperia Notaio (IT). Pomerantz is a recent recipient of a Leeway Foundation Art + Change grant. Pomerantz works as a critic in the interdisciplinary MFA program at the School of Visual Arts and a lecturer in Fine Arts and Visual Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Pomerantz holds a BA in Art History from the University of Chicago, an MFA from the University of Pennsylvania in Interdisciplinary Art and an ED.M From Harvard University Graduate School of Education. Pomerantz also curates exhibitions, writes and tends to oysters.