2022 End of Year Letter

Howdy friends,

As we approach the holidays and the end of 2022 we want to express our deep appreciation for your continued support of Co-Lab Projects, our artists, programs, and efforts to develop a nonprofit owned-and-operated studio and gallery complex in Austin. 

The development effort continues––recently we received approval for our site development permit, which has been years in the making and suffered repeated delays due to the government slowdown during the pandemic. We’re moving full steam ahead in our fundraising efforts and are in a crucial moment in the timeline of this project. While we meet with foundational donors and raise the funds required to begin construction we are counting on the contributions of our loyal donors and community members to help us through this next phase. Please consider how you might be able to contribute at this important moment and thank you in advance.

This year we focused on expanding what’s possible in our temporary gallery space by programming several sonic and performance-based works in addition to object-oriented exhibitions. We began with the widely attended audio-visual installation VOLUMES by artist Ezra Masch. The exhibition and performance series ran eight weeks and featured over 20 local, national, and international percussionists. By pairing local and visiting performers from different musical cultures and philosophies, the events brought together divergent communities and produced truly moving experiences.

Over the summer we presented an exhibition by recent UT graduate students Alex Boeschenstein, Anthony Rundblade, and Emma Rossoff titled Doom and Bloom which asked “how does one make art about and within this in-real-life apocalyptic stream?” The works in the exhibition implored hope, humor and horror to reflect on the current state of our reality. We finished the summer program with an event true to old-school Co-Lab form, poolboy: I WANT TO LISTEN, a week-long residency/rehearsal that culminated in a blow out performance and pool party. Sam Mayer’s online alter ego, and the subject of his ongoing durational reality show poolboy00, transmuted into the in-person reality of the post-pandemic as an interactive performance that brought a range of cathartic experiences for patrons.

In the fall we presented a solo exhibition by Adrian Aguilera How Soon Is Now?? which consisted of “found videos exploring occurrences of a single year, 1997, projected on a cone-shaped screen, along with an assemblage of playlists, light-based work, human-scale text, and print works. Together, these pieces function as non-explicit information retrieval systems” which “organize historical records with unashamed sentimentality”. This was Aguilera’s first solo exhibition in Austin.

Our current exhibition The Permian Recordings by Phil Peters is “a series of durational subterranean field recordings that capture the low-frequency vibrations of the Permian Basin in West Texas. This site-specific installation brings the recordings back to Texas for the very first time. Exploiting Co-Lab’s unique concrete culvert, the piece turns the gallery into an enormous infra-sonic subwoofer, a speaker at the scale of architecture.” Peters’ exhibition is open through January 14th, 2023, and we hope you can experience it before it closes.

In 2023 we will begin the year with a profound exhibition many years in the making by Mexico City based artist Virginia Colwell, curated by Leslie Moody Castro, and supported by the Jumex Foundation. To Have and to Hold looks “at the similarities of the landscape, and particularly that of the Southern United States and its similarities with the state of Veracruz, Mexico, Colwell uses the romanization of the South to examine the deliberate obfuscation of the deep history of enslavement and racism.”

Going forward we’ll continue to produce high-quality projects such as these, curatorially tailored to our temporary gallery space, while our development plans and fundraising efforts continue unabated. Until then we wish you a wonderful holiday season and a happy new year!

With gratitude,
Sean Gaulager, Executive Director and Curator
and Directors Austin Nelsen, Leslie Moody Castro, Vladimir Mejia, and Chris Burch