g/re/p
Jess Johnson aka flesh_dozer

March 9th - April 20th, 2024
Open Hours: Saturdays 12-6pm
5419 Glissman Rd, Austin, TX 78702

Friday, April 19th, 7-11pm:
Closing Reception & Screening of Everything is Terrible's The Great Satan. In partnership with Everything Is Terrible, We Luv Video, and Hyperreal Film Club. Co-Lab brings you a raucous celebration of art, film, and plants that will blow your mind! Free for Members and general public admission available soon!

Jess Johnson brings to life a complex fictional world through hand-drawn images that are inspired by her interests in science fiction, comic books, technology, architecture, and theories of consciousness. For her exhibition in the culvert, Johnson has collaborated with her Mother, Cynthia Johnson, on a new series of quilts. They appear suspended in the culvert, as doorways offering glimpses into different realms.

The concept of world-building lies at the heart of Johnson’s densely layered artworks. She formulates worlds within worlds through self-replicating geometric patterns, temple-like structures, and obscure symbology. The worlds depicted are inhabited by a variety of humanoid figures, alien creatures, worms, prehistoric bugs, and deities entangled into the patterning and internal architecture of this realm.

The exhibition “g/re/p” hints at a world on the brink of collapse under the weight of its own inherent structure. Johnson alludes to numerous literary references that forewarn of god complexes, such as: the novelette Sandkings (1979) by George R. R. Martin, where a man who controls a set of creatures in an aquarium goes from being worshiped by their sand effigies to being punished by them for the cruelty he inflicts; the Greek myths of Icarus, flying too close to the sun; and the biblical story, The Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1-9) where the Babylonians presumptuously build a tower from earth to heaven only to be cursed by God. Johnson’s work provides a timely reminder that self-replicating civilizations can flourish when left to their own devices but can also crumble in familiar patterns of exhausted natural resources and rebellion against parasitic elites, gods or their creator.

Jess Johnson (b. 1979 in New Zealand) is a contemporary artist who lives and works between the USA and New Zealand. Her artworks reflect ideologies of technology and flesh, both ancient and futuristic. Her drawing practice feeds into installations and collaborations in animation, music, fashion, virtual reality, and textile art. Johnson’s work has been exhibited extensively including at Jack Hanley Gallery, New York; Art Basel, Hong Kong; Nanzuka Gallery, Tokyo; Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh, UK; Centre Clark, Montreal; the National Gallery of Australia; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; and Auckland Art Gallery, New Zealand. Jess Johnson is represented by Jack Hanley Gallery, New York; Darren Knight Gallery, Australia; Ivan Anthony Gallery, New Zealand; and Nanzuka Gallery, Tokyo.

This project is supported in part by grants from the Cultural Arts Division of the City of Austin Economic Development Department, Texas Commission on the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, and H-E-B.

Porch Swing Orchestra and Co-Lab Projects Present:
VAST IS THE SEA

January 20th through February 24th, 2024

All presentations are maximally 45 minutes long
There will be a 15-20-minute intermission between presentations
Each presentation is ticketed separately except for the opening night which is one combined ticket

February 17 - Sliding Scale Tickets
7pm Ariana Gomez
8pm Gavin Watts / The Reformers

February 23 - Members Only (become a member and get invited today!)
7pm A Night with Barry Stone and Friends

February 24 - Sliding Scale Tickets
7pm Jessica Mallios
8pm Thomas Hooper / Skloss


“Vast is the sea of hearing around the raft of vision.”
― Michel Chion, La Toile Trouee (Cahiers Du Cinema. Essays Collection)

Vast is the Sea is a series of presentations from eight artists whose diverse works are united by their explorations of images and sound. The title comes from a translation of the composer and film theorist Michel Chion's analysis of the relationship between sound and image in cinema. In their presentations, each artist constructs new oceans through live performances, video, and sound processing. Viewers are invited to gaze at visions projected on the ceiling and swim among the sounds in real time.

Porch Swing Orchestra is an art project begun by Barry Stone that explores the interplay between site-specific images, musical improvisation/chance operation, and field recordings. Pictures taken on-site accompany fleeting melodies recorded among conversations of passersby, the rattle of air conditioners, birdsong, sirens of cicadas, and all matter of environmental sonic phenomena. 

Most recordings take place on Stone’s front porch in Austin, Texas, but PSO has traveled to Spiral Jetty in Utah, the border town of Del Rio, Texas, Maine, the San Juan Islands, and performed live in the James Turrell Skyspace, The Color Inside as a part of The Univerity of Texas Landmarks Songs in the Skyspace Program. Since 2018, PSO has collaborated with dozens of musicians, artists, poets, writers, and activists to publish over 200 pieces.

All things PSO can be found at https://porchswingorchestra.org/

This project is supported in part by grants from the Cultural Arts Division of the City of Austin Economic Development Department, Texas Commission on the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, and H-E-B.

Boy’s Ranch
Ana Segovia

November 11th - December 16th, 2023
Opening Reception: Saturday, November 11th, 7-11pm (please RSVP)
On view Saturdays 12-6pm through December 16th
Also on view during the Austin Studio Tour, November 11th, 12th 18th, & 19th, 12-6pm

In Boy’s Ranch, Ana Segovia presents an installation composed of pieces in very different formats, dissecting his creative process and allowing us to penetrate—in a pedagogical sense—into the reflections that he seeks for himself, and the processes that he carries out for the purposes of creation. Painting has been the central part of Ana Segovia’s artistic practice, and through painting Ana has almost always reinterpreted preexisting archives. In a large part of his work, he has extracted audiovisual frames featuring male protagonists in order to generate another reading of what they represent. 

Segovia has developed an exhibition format in which his paintings form parts of installations, incorporating other elements, and thus constituting narratives that help to clarify his discourse. This is how he has built a career that stands out not only for the technical aspects of his work but also for the depth of his tender, fun, sour, and nostalgic parody of masculinity. This arises from the process that Ana has lived through since his mother showed him films from the Golden Age of Mexican Cinema. At a young age he developed an admiration for the characters played by Mauricio Garcés, Jorge Negrete, and Pedro Infante—wishing, as he grew up, to be a charro—a Mexican cowboy—just like them. 

This was one of the first revelations of his conflict with gender stereotypes, leading him to deepen his research into the devices through which what we now recognize as hegemonic masculinity is imposed. 

Through his practice Ana began to address the most perverse aspects of those ways in which the film industry has participated in creating an artificial masculinity, one that maintains the context of machista violence that cruelly damages our humanity even to the present day. During a residency at Unlisted Projects in Austin, Texas — and after several years of addressing representations of the charro in the Golden Age of Mexican Cinema—Ana came across the Texas Archive of the Moving Image. At the archive was a compilation of audiovisual materials created in or about Texas, where he found a promotional film from 1953 of Carl Farley ́s Boys Ranch, a philanthropic institution created during the U.S.’s Great Depression, and meant to provide homes and education for orphaned children and adolescents. 

Boys Ranch proposed a model of reintegration that consisted of training boys to be “cowboys,” an identity promoted in those years with the aim of unifying a political and nationalist identity in the U.S. At the same time in Mexico, the identity of the charro was being constructed as a national symbol in order to promote the idea of mestizo “Mexicanness.” Both archetypes arise from shared elements and both were spread through film, albeit responding to different nationalist interests. The “cowboy,” however, was formed out of the hegemonic values that the U.S. sought to promote: a land of white, strong, brave, free, and honorable men. 

In this promotional film it is boasted that these young orphans will become good citizens who will maintain the roughness they have known throughout their lives, with the goal of showing the kindness of the philanthropist toward orphaned children, positioning themselves as well-recognized social benefactor. Nevertheless, 67 years later, Ana recognizes the way in which innocence was removed from these minors, converting them into the archetype of ideal masculinity. Considering that the hegemony of racist and misogynist ideas are both problematic and still very present, we can see how these archetypes still exist at the center of our most pertinent political discussions. Using this promotional film as raw material, Ana develops a series of pieces that allow us to see this archive from another point of view: for example, when editing parts of the film’s audio he creates 7 haibun pose, a Japanese literary form that uses prose texts to describe some space or natural situation in detail. Ana considers this editing game a synthetic act of resistance, taking place within Carl Farley’s Boys Ranch’s duration of 13 minutes and 14 seconds. 

Segovia also dissects the scene from the film in which one of the inhabitants of the Boys Ranch is thrown into water by his peers. Ana intervenes in the 230 frames that compose it, coloring in the swim trunk of the boys with watercolor.

With this, he seeks to emphasize the everyday violence that this education encourages: this action presented in the film as a healthy game for these young people’s development, nevertheless exposing an action characteristic of machista violence, one that annuls the consent of another person with the aim of showing strength. 

-Andrés Treviño 
(translated by Byron Davies)

Segovia earned his BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). He has had individual exhibitions in the United States and Mexico, and his works are part of institutions including The Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) and Alumnos 47 in Mexico City. Ana Segovia currently lives and works in Mexico City.

Thank you to Rocio Fernandez de Angulo for all your magic and for keeping us together. Thank you Andrés Treviño for your beautiful text, and to Sarah Kahloun for your work on getting us books, and to everyone who participated in our book club. Thank you to Zac Traeger and Unlisted Projects for the foundation through which this project could come to life, and to PAOS Guadalajara for showing it first. Special thanks to Stacey Hill and Susan Oliver Heard, and to HEB for your generosity that made this project a reality. Most importantly, thank you to Ana Segovia for every single time you said “yes” unwaveringly.

This project is supported in part by the Cultural Arts Division of the City of Austin Economic Development Department, Texas Commission on the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, and H-E-B.

Co-Lab Book Club
Led by Leslie Moody Castro in conjunction with Ana Segovia’s exhibition Boy’s Ranch

October 13th — November 13th, 2023
This and all future Book Club editions are FREE for Members

Book Club members will discuss via Discord and will be invited to an in-person conversation with Leslie Moody Castro and Ana Segovia on November 13th.

We will be reading both of the following books, Cartucho is very short and will not take long to finish.


- Book 1 -

Cartucho by Nellie Campobello
55 pages
Buy the book here

Cartucho: Tales of the Struggle in Northern Mexico (Cartucho: Relatos de la lucha en el Norte de México) is a semi-autobiographical short novel, or novella set in the Mexican Revolution and originally published in 1931. It consists of a series of vignettes that draw on Campobello's memories of her childhood and adolescence (and the stories her mother told her) in Northern Mexico during the war. Though long overlooked, it is now celebrated, among other reasons because it is, as Mexican critic Elena Poniatowska points out, "the only real vision of the Mexican revolution written by a woman."

About the Author:
Nellie (or Nelly) Francisca Ernestina Campobello Luna (November 7, 1900 – July 9, 1986) was a Mexican writer, notable for having written one of the few chronicles of the Mexican Revolution from a woman's perspective: Cartucho, which chronicles her experience as a young girl in Northern Mexico at the height of the struggle between forces loyal to Pancho Villa and those who followed Venustiano Carranza. She moved to Mexico City in 1923, where she spent the rest of her life and associated with many of the most famous Mexican intellectuals and artists of the epoch. Like her half-sister Gloria, a well-known ballet dancer, she was also known as a dancer and choreographer. She was the director of the Mexican National School of Dance.


- Book 2 -

All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy
302 pages
Buy the book here

All the Pretty Horses is a novel by American author Cormac McCarthy published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1992. It was a bestseller, winning both the U.S. National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. It is the first of McCarthy's "Border Trilogy".

About the Author:
Cormac McCarthy (born Charles Joseph McCarthy Jr.; July 20, 1933 – June 13, 2023) was an American writer who authored twelve novels, two plays, five screenplays, and three short stories, spanning the Western and post-apocalyptic genres. He was known for his graphic depictions of violence and his unique writing style, recognizable by a sparse use of punctuation and attribution. McCarthy is widely regarded as one of the greatest American novelists. McCarthy was born in Providence, Rhode Island, although he was raised primarily in Tennessee. In 1951, he enrolled in the University of Tennessee, but dropped out to join the U.S. Air Force. His debut novel, The Orchard Keeper, was published in 1965. Awarded literary grants, McCarthy was able to travel to southern Europe, where he wrote his second novel, Outer Dark (1968). Suttree (1979), like his other early novels, received generally positive reviews, but was not a commercial success. A MacArthur Fellowship enabled him to travel to the American Southwest, where he researched and wrote his fifth novel, Blood Meridian (1985). Although it initially garnered a lukewarm critical and commercial reception, it has since been regarded as his magnum opus, with some labeling it the Great American Novel.

This Mother’s Cave
Gabrielle Constantine and Rowan Howe

October 7th - 28th, 2023
On View Saturdays 12-6pm through October 28th

This Mother’s Cave is an exhibition of new, collaborative work from Gabrielle Constantine and Rowan Howe. Utilizing the culvert's architecture, the artists transform the cement space into a womb like atmosphere. Continuously swaying from internal to external, the walls layer domestic motifs, thrifted objects, found photographs, wheat pasted paintings and sculptures to create a sticky facade of childhood space, memories, maternal wisdoms and signals of generational traumas. Quilting and collaging materials become a sounding ground or wallpaper for the artists to build upon, creating isolated moments of material and contextual density. This is a sensory installation that employs light, sound, texture, and smell to create a spirituality of sorts, perhaps achieving the same sensibility as catching the scent of someone once known in a new place, transporting you to an embedded memory, if only for a moment.

With-in this mind, nest, womb, shelter, home, cave, Constantine and Howe intertwine a spectrum of what typifies mother, in order to reflect on the multiplicities that arise within this complicated role and namesake.

Gabrielle Constantine (1994) was born and raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where she received her double BFA in Sculpture and Fibers and Material studies at the Tyler School of Art (2017). She’s currently living and working in Austin, TX and holds an MFA from The University of Texas of Austin. Growing up in an Armenian community and the restaurant industry has heavily influenced her linguistic, material, and performative decisions surrounding her sculptures, installations, and gatherings.

Rowan Howe (b. 1997) grew up in Chicago, IL with her single mother. Through painting and collage her work speaks to performance and the continuous alteration of memories through the collaging of landscape, found imagery, and the female body. She holds a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and recently completed her MFA in Painting and Drawing from the University of Texas at Austin.

Show Me a Dawn
Featuring Anahita Bradberry, Hayley Morrison, Jamal Hussain, Jay Jones, Justo Cisneros, Kira Matica, and Noelle Fitzsimmons

September 9th - 23rd, 2023
Opening Reception: September 9th, 7-11pm
Open Hours: Saturday, September 16th & 23rd, 12-6pm
Closing Reception: September 23rd, 7-11pm

Sirius rises late in the dark, liquid sky
On summer nights, star of stars,
Orion's Dog they call it, brightest
Of all, but an evil portent, bringing heat
And fevers to suffering humanity.
- Homer's Iliad

Show me a dawn like a rising star that becomes visible before sunrise. 

Gift me a star after the earth orbits the sun, one heralded by dawn and granted by Sirius. Take me to the genesis of the pattern, before the fall, before the emergence of recursive time. 

Show me a dawn before technological accomplishment defined our ecological collapse.  

Gift me a moment devoid of natural disasters, madness, and the dog days of summer heat steeped in Luciferian ritual. Take me to that moment of dawn like a rising star. 

Show me a dawn before the fall when the garden still existed within us, before the rising star, before the serpent and the apple, before the patterns and the quantified human soul. Show me the dawn of now, a dawn for every morning of seven days and seven stars, a dawn we carry and that carries us.

Collaborative text by Leslie Moody Castro and Sean Gaulager

I (WANT TO) KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER
An open call for new artists

Open call dates: June 20th - July 31st, 2023
Application review: first week of August
Notification: second week of August
Exhibition dates: September 9th - 23rd, 2023

Co-Lab Projects invites all Austin area artists who have not physically exhibited with us in the past to apply for this open call exhibition. The application is open to individual artists, curators, collectives, or other groups who fit this description.

Submitted/proposed works may be in any medium including but not limited to: installation, video/film, performance, 2D and 3D static works, social practice, etc. Please consider the installation logistics and limitations of the culvert gallery, for example the space is not temperature or humidity controlled which means it is not necessarily an ideal environment for works on paper or photography. If you have specific concerns we’re happy to answer any questions before you submit.

Artworks do not have to be from any specific time frame. The open call title is tongue in cheek, however we do encourage applying with semi-recent work and/or new proposed work.

Works will be reviewed and selected by the Board of Directors and the format of the exhibition will be determined by these selections. For example we may decide to pair two artists who submitted separately, or build a multiple artist exhibition from several applicants, or a large group exhibition may take shape. The format will depend largely on what we receive from applicants.

View the application here and submit your ideas! What are you waiting for huh?!

Railrodeo
Mick Burson

May 13th - July 8th, 2023
5419 Glissman Road
On view Saturdays 12-6pm

I drove East chasing trains and hanging on to sobriety, and I landed in a gravel lot in an industrial area in Arkansas. I stayed parked there for two months, making work about horses and matches. Immediately outside the window of my RV were meeting halls, and beyond that was a train yard, and I began to paint horses on the freight trains while simultaneously making matchbook collages through which I could grow my pieces within a constrained living space. 

The matchbook collections were obtained from strangers, and I began to make up narratives about the person behind each collection and the nightlife they lived. The matchbooks with only one singular match left in them were always curious to me and gave me anxiety—each book really only has 20 chances to accomplish something. 

On a random Tuesday, my dog and I left Arkansas with the matchbook collages and we drove to Texas to visit a friend in a metal shop where I began making objects from steel, including horses, which mimicked the horses I had painted on the side of the steel trains. Each sheet of steel is cut freehand like a style of drawing, then painted with even less thought. 

I take my dog on multiple walks daily—a guarantee that I give her—and while on our walks I impulsively collect trash and detritus whenever I feel an attraction to them. I take my objects and findings home and incessantly arrange, paint, attach, and reattach the objects until I find either a balance or a moment of acceptance with the finished object. Each found object sculpture holds a very specific geographical location, date, and time for me, though ultimately they are made in a mindless manner which gives them a voice of their own. I made these objects with the freedom of creativity, with the freedom that they would not necessarily be shown to the public. 

Mick Burson (b. 1990) is a multimedia artist who combines painting, sculpture, print and installation to create playful abstract works. He has created public art murals all over the world including the United States, Portugal, England, Spain, and Israel. In 2018, Burson executed the largest mural in New Mexico to date on Keshet Dance Center. His work is in the permanent collections of the Fidelity Investments Corporate Art Collection, Facebook Private Collection, We-work Collection, City of Albuquerque Public Art Collection, Polsinelli Corporate Art Collection, and others. He is currently represented by Richard Levy Gallery in Albuquerque, New Mexico. 

Info sheet and prices

Sonic Meditation for Solo Performer
Steve Parker

April 13th - May 6th
Open Hours: Saturdays, 12-6pm (no tickets or reservations required)
Closing Performance with Pamela Martinez: Saturday, May 6th, 7-9pm (tickets required)

Sonic Meditation for Solo Performer reimagines the college marching band as a tool for sonic meditation. The project examines themes of healing, injury, and labor in NCAA football, drawing from legacies of sonic therapy, including 12th c. abbess Hildegard von Bingen’s liturgical songs, Pauline Oliveros’ Deep Listening practice, Anthony Braxton’s radical marching bands, and Guadalupe Maravilla’s Disease Thrower sculptures.

The installation works as an immersive musical composition featuring an ecosystem of automated sonic sculptures made from salvaged marching band instruments. The installation is activated by a viewer or performer wearing an EEG headset. As the participant realizes the text score, the EEG device measures and transmits electrical brain activity. The data generated by the participants' brain waves are translated in real-time to realize a multi-channel composition played by the instruments.

Steve Parker is an artist that works with salvaged musical instruments, amateur choirs, marching bands, urban bat colonies, flocks of grackles, and pedicab fleets to investigate systems of control, interspecies behavior, and forgotten histories. He is the recipient of the Rome Prize, the Tito’s Prize, a Fulbright Fellowship, and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Parker’s projects include elaborate civic rituals for humans, animals, and machines; listening sculptures modeled after obsolete surveillance tools; and cathartic transportation symphonies for operators of cars, pedicabs, and bicycles. Exhibition and performance highlights include the American Academy in Rome (Italy), Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art (Arkansas), CUE Art Foundation (NY), the Fusebox Festival (Austin), Gwangju Media Art Festival (Korea), the Guggenheim Museum (NY), the Lincoln Center Festival (NY), Los Angeles Philharmonic inSIGHT (LA), the Lucerne Festival (Switzerland), MASS MoCA (Massachusetts), the McNay Art Museum (San Antonio), Rich Mix (London), SXSW, and Tanglewood. As a soloist and as an artist of NYC-based "new music dream team" Ensemble Signal, he has premiered 200+ new works.

Parker has been awarded support from the National Endowment for the Arts, New Music USA, the Copland Foundation, the Puffin Foundation, and the Mid America Arts Alliance. He is curator of SoundSpace at the Blanton Museum of Art, Executive Director of Collide Arts, and a faculty member at UTSA. He holds degrees in Math and Music from Oberlin, Rice, and UT Austin.

This project was generously supported by the Music Academy of the West Alumni Enterprise Award, the Mid-America Arts Alliance, and the Art League Houston.

Join us in Mexico City for the Material Art Fair! We will be presenting some special selections in collaboration with Beverly’s NYC including work from Yeni Mao, Adrian Aguilera / Betehem Makonnen, and CC Calloway.

February 9-12
Expro Reforma, CDMX

About Material Art Fair https://material-fair.com
About Beverly’s NYC http://beverlys.nyc

To Have and to Hold
Virginia Colwell
Curated by Leslie Moody Castro

January 28th - April 1st, 2023 (extended dates)
On view Saturdays 12-6pm

Read the conversation between Virginia Colwell and Glasstire Editor Leslie Moody Castro here:
Part One, Part Two, & Part Three

Read the review from Sightlines here

To Have and to Hold is an exhibition of new work by Virginia Colwell (Mexico City, born Nebraska, 1980), whose work operates in the ambiguity of truth and fiction in history and archives. By looking 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.

To Have and to Hold exposes the profound history of perpetuated erasure, of a racialized past, and our own present state of denial. Sited at Co-Lab Projects, the exhibition refers to and is relevant to Austin, Texas through a shared connection of the ball moss and vegetation that exists naturally in the city. This landscape ties us to the roots of historical subjugation, and is evidenced in the history of the city of Austin and the State of Texas. 

Virginia Colwell’s work examines the space between official and unofficial histories and the poetic ambiguities of truth and fiction in historical narratives. Often, her artworks begin in archives: her father’s FBI archive with its Caribbean case files, the archives of clandestine Puerto Rican revolutionaries from the Cold War, the US embassy archives analyzing the El Salvadorian Marxist insurgency, and archives about Mexican political corruption of the 1970s. Her drawings, sculptures, and videos reinvestigate these pasts through site visits, interviews, research, and requests for declassified documents.

Colwell’s works have been exhibited at the Center for Contemporary Art in Lithuania, the Hirschorn Museum in the United States, the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rome, and the Centro Cultural Félix Varela during the 12th Havana Biennial. She has been an artist in residence with Beta-Local’s La Prática program in Puerto Rico, Kiosko in Bolivia, Untitled Art Fair’s Fountainhead Residency program in Miami, and the multimedia art center Hangar in Barcelona, Spain. Colwell has received numerous awards including the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Award, a Pollock Krasner Foundation Fellowship, and a Jumex Foundation Grant. Her work is part of various private and public collections including the Alumnos Foundation, the Axa Collection, the Benetton Foundation, and the collection of the Museo Reina Sofia.

This project is the recipient of a Jumex Foundation Grant to support production and research. This is the first in an ongoing series exploring the relationship between the landscape and history. 

The Permian Recordings
Phil Peters

LAST DAY TO SEE AND HEAR: SATURDAY, JANUARY 14TH
Open Hours 12-6pm and Closing Reception 7-11pm
5419 Glissman Road, Austin, TX 78702

The Permian Recordings are 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. As in previous installations, the work brings into proximity two scales of time: the geologic and the biologic, expressing them not as irreconcilable measures of change, but as part of a continuum. In this specific installation, I imagine architecture as a bridge between the human and the geologic via the symbolic threshold at which foundation touches earth. Architecture is designed to be experienced in human time as the space we pass through and live within, and yet it endures, as in the ruins of our earliest structures, buried in dirt, a ligature to a distant past that simultaneously projects out into an uncertain future. Within this context, the concrete structure becomes a tuning fork on the surface of the earth, resonating with the frequencies of an industrialized landscape. 

The Permian Basin is home to one of the world largest oil and gas extraction industries, while at the same time it is named for a geologic epoch whose end demarcates a period of catastrophic climate change and the largest mass extinction in the history of the earth. The frequencies in these recordings are both document and phenomenon: an aggregate of the hum of generators, the hammer of sand trucks down private roads, and the drone of drill bits churning invisible below the surface. How does one conceptualize a system so large in scope and consequence that it has passed over into the geologic? Standing in a field we hear the trucks and can count the towers and flares, but it’s only when we look down from satellites that we see the perfect grid of exhausted wells stretching for miles in all directions. But what of all we cannot see? The subterranean network of pipes and reservoirs, or the export of these mining technologies around the world, and of course the supply chain of oil whose thick black pipes that snake along roadsides throughout the permian eventually divide into a delicate vasculature that feeds every aspect of our individual lives? There is an anxiety in the infra-sonic, a sound that is felt but unheard. These recordings extend from ancient rocks, passing through the structures we’ve built, and on into our bodies. Entering the speaker actualizes this connection, this linking of stone to flesh through the reverberations of architecture. Listening to these recordings from within the culvert, one is invited to sift through the acoustic strata and reflect on our connection to and participation in these larger terrestrial and climatic systems of which we are a constituent part spanning vast periods of time.

A transdisciplinary art practice exploring the evolving relationship between the built and natural world through video, audio, and sculptural installations. Speculative architectural histories, contemporary ecology, and slippages between the biologic and geologic all inform this work. Phil Peters received an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, IL and a BA from Carleton College in Northfield, MN. In 2014-15 he co-founded and curated an artist-run project space LODGE (In Service of the Dark Arts), Chicago, IL. Recent exhibitions of his work include “Build Carry” at The Arts Club of Chicago's Drawing Room, Chicago, IL; “Volcanic Drift,” at the Galveston Artist Residency, Galveston, TX; “Outside/In” at LAXART, Los Angeles, CA; and “The Port of Long Beach Recordings,” at Canary Gallery, Los Angeles, CA. Phil lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.

How Soon Is Now??
Adrian Aguilera

September 17th - October 29th, 2022
Gallery hours: Saturdays, 12-6pm
5419 Glissman Rd, Austin, TX 78702

“The shape of tentative futures is the cone /
La forma de los futuros tentativos es el cono.”

How Soon Is Now?? consists 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 might function as non-explicit information retrieval systems.

Devising an invitation to interrogate a rigid, limited window of one year of phenomena is an intimate quest: any research found in the work is about the subject of 1997 and the investigator himself. Stressing cultural artifacts and remnants of late 90s production show us where and to what the artist was anchored at the moment. Viewers will simultaneously locate themselves in the timeline and do their own calculations of relatability.

No form factor is more favored by present-day uncertainty planners, futurists, and forecasters than the cone. Meteorologists, as an example, rely on cone overlays to graphically convey possible paths of hurricanes. A melting ice cream cone is near-perfect hand-held technology demonstrating phase change. The cone might be our best present-day temporal sequencer. 

But the cone presented in How Soon Is Now?? explicitly contains audio and images of a tentative past. Dealing with appallingly complex and appealingly simple nostalgia, the artist constructs a departure point for the future in a different way. Even if we're familiar with the references or spend hours with the installation's music and projection, we can only ever be detached from 1997 as it is arranged in the work.

What happens, always happens now. Presenting evidence of the twenty-fifth anniversary of now requires "screening out" a mass of substantial spectacles. In this single-channel video installation, the screen is not only a visual pun, It is also a supplemental, uneasy device for relationship building: the viewer becomes a factor in the selective interpretive journey. Confronting overlapping, spliced sociological and psychological propositions is to move through heavier material than the light the videos are projected through. An unintentionally weird (it can't not be weird) audio-visual reconstruction of a 365-day moment presented with no obvious hierarchies evolves into a medium and a manipulation --1997 as a nostalgic metric.

How Soon Is Now?? organizes historical records with unashamed sentimentality. The title is on loan from The Smiths but transmits added urgency with double-barrelled punctuation. Reworking a portion of the past, Aguilera encounters his sixteen-year-old self in 2022, extracts some sense of the "historic," and possibly feels the clock ticking. Behind the pop-culture moments are hints of some of 1997's political atmospheres and abundance of generative global accords. Social statements of encouragement felt by all our younger selves.

A dual purpose emerges from a cone's convex lens shape. Typically we look forward through a lens. Engaging with this work, Aguilera invites us to reverse focus from 2022 to 1997 -- crossing invisible lines marking Y2K and the turn of the century. In doing so, we focus retroactively and on contracted shared paths. There's no denying the effect of inverted possibility -- or, like The Smith’s song says, nothing in particular.

Born in Mexico's industrial capital of Monterrey. Aguilera immigrated as a young adult to the U.S., where he settled in Austin, Texas, in the late 2000s. He received his BFA (2004) from The Autonomous University of Nuevo León, México. Working with a variety of mediums that include sculpture, text-based work, print media, public art, video and installations, he researches the intrinsical essence that resides in objects. With interest in scientific observation, cultural history, and social issues, Aguilera's work aboard our relationship with the physical and cultural spaces in which we (co)exist. He has exhibited nationally and internationally at the Alfred University, The Philbrook Museum, The Contemporary Austin, Artpace San Antonio, the Fusebox Festival, The Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas, The George Washington Carver Museum, and The Instituto Cultural de México in Paris, France. In addition to his practice, he is an active member of the Austin-based contemporary arts collaborative Black Mountain Project. He currently lives and works in Austin, Texas. @rarospeinadosnuevos www.adrianaguilera.com


Image: Adrian Aguilera and Vania Chew, former co-worker and wife. View of the art department at a Bilingual School, Monterrey, Mexico, August 1997. Courtesy of the artist.

poolboy: I WANT TO LISTEN
Sam Mayer

July 18th - 23rd
Open Rehearsal: Monday, July 18th - Friday, July 22nd, 9-10pm (daily, free)
drop in and out, observe, participate, and get drunk with poolboy while he works
Performance: Saturday, July 23rd, 8:30-10:30pm (one night only, free, please RSVP)
performance, installation, vibes, tunes, karaoke, swimming pool, IRL chaos

poolboy: I WANT TO LISTEN is a weeklong residency in which artistic and personal feedback become the raw material for an immersive IRL performance and party. poolboy00 is artist Sam Mayer’s online alter ego and the subject of poolboy00 (2020-present): an ongoing, durational reality show/interactive memoir/talk show for the streaming platform Twitch. In I WANT TO LISTEN poolboy00 engages in a series of ever-escalating feedback sessions with collaborators, spectators, and archival material at daily open studios. At the end of the week poolboy00 and momgrab (artist Julia Mounsey) are putting on a performance and throwing a big party at the Glissman culvert gallery. There will be a pool to swim in. poolboy: I WANT TO LISTEN is part installation, part interactive performance, and all vibes. 

Sam Mayer is a playwright and performance maker from Houston, TX. Full-length works include THE CUCK (Intramural Theater), POOLBOY2: MAXIMUM CLOSURE (Crashbox), POOLBOY00 (UTNT), CHET'S SUMMER VACATION (Kennedy Center; Intramural Theater; Rec Room Arts), SPITSHOW (Collective48), THE SIN EATER (Frontera Fest), and THE YOLO PLAYS Pt. 1 & 2 (The Silent Barn; Collective 48). His work has been developed with The Orchard Project, The Workshop Theater, The Mastheads, and SPACE on Ryder Farm. He is the recipient of the Chesley/Bumbalo Foundation Prize and a fellowship from the Michener Center for Writers. MFA: UT Austin. 

Julia Mounsey is a director and writer. Her work has been presented at Under the Radar at the Public Theater, Soho Rep, JACK, Dixon Place, the Radikal Jung Festival at the München Volkstheater in Munich and the Deutsches Schauspielhaus in Hamburg. Along with her creative partner Peter Mills Weiss, she was a member of the 2017-2018 Devised Theater Working Group at the Public Theater, the 2017-2019 Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab, and was a Baryshnikov Arts Center Resident Artist in 2019. 

Doom and Bloom
Alex Boeschenstein, Anthony Rundblade, and Emma Rossoff

May 7th - 28th, 2022
Opening Reception: May 7th, 7-11pm
On view Saturdays 12-6pm

Doom and Bloom is an exhibition of prints, sculptures, and sound by Alex Boeschenstein, Anthony Rundblade, and Emma Rossoff. As our world teeters on the precipice of runaway global warming, with pandemic mutations and Satanic Panic revivals curdling inside capitalist cycles of crisis and collapse, these three artists ask the question: how does one make art about and within this in-real-life apocalyptic stream? With a mixture of hope, humor, and horror, their vision invokes the absurdity of being suspended within the bog-water monotony of an unevenly collapsing system, of dangling helplessly by a string, watching on as the outmoded refuse to die. 

Each artist develops their own reflections but with collaborative leakages across works. There is a shared focus on the vehicle and the confined space, alluding to the (im)possibility of escape. Modes of transportation fall apart as the way forward inverts, twists, and coils like a mobius strip. Moving through the culverts, gravity and scale intensify as the familiar becomes estranged. Creatures, avatars, everyday objects, and schematic systems emerge from the rubble weirder than before. 

Emma Rossoff builds constellations of found and crafted objects. For Doom and Bloom, Rossoff has mummified and metamorphosed a collection of forgotten, gifted, and stolen debris into her own nocturnal playpen. Anthony Rundblade is a printmaker and sculptor interested in the residue and reverberation of the found image and object, often framing his artwork in the principles of the Grotesque. In Doom and Bloom, Anthony recalls contemporary media images of unruly passengers duct-taped to airline seats, bound to uncontrollable destinations by future promises and delusions. Alex Boeschenstein is fixated on history, how it haunts the present and how it failed the future. For the exhibition, he materializes rhetorical devices from the homiletics of American religious revivals and subsumes hyper-rational engineering documents he salvaged from an abandoned sulphur mine into realms of eerie illegibility. 

If we are trapped in this sclerotic system’s labyrinth of tunnels, then Doom and Bloom is a playful attempt by three artists to drill a keyhole view with inadequate machinery into the reinforced concrete confining us.

Co-Lab Projects presents:
VOLUMES
Ezra Masch

Featuring: Adam Jackson, Chris Cogburn, Alton Jenkins, Julia Hungerford, Thor Harris, Lesley Mok, Forest Cazayoux, Lunar Rae, Brannen Temple, Line Upon Line, Sean Ripple, Milo Tamez, Michael Davila, Toto Miranda, Gerry Gibbs, and Greg Fox

Last chance to experience VOLUMES!
April 23rd: Closing Performances by Toto Miranda (8pm), Gerry Gibbs (9pm), Greg Fox (10pm), and special return guests for an after-hours jam
GET TICKETS HERE
Sponsored by Ranch Rider Spirits, Tequila 512, Tito’s Handmade Vodka, and Austin Beer Works

Photosensitive warning: this exhibition contains bright flashing lights that could trigger seizures for people with visual sensitivities

VOLUMES is a project by multidisciplinary artist Ezra Masch: an audio-visual instrument that uses a drum set to activate a site-specific grid of lights. The volume of the sound corresponds to the volume of the exhibition space. The system translates sound into a visual language, allowing percussionists to express their ideas 3-dimensionally. It is an immersive, multi-sensory experience that is part instrument, part sculpture, and part performance. Participating drummers explore the relationship between temporal space and physical space, as well as the connection between sound and moving image. The connection between light and sound has fascinated artists, musicians, and scientists for centuries, Masch’s installation is inspired by audio-visual instruments dating back to the early 1700s. His exploration of sound and moving image touches on an array of interests including synesthesia, architecture, technology, and experimental film.

Recent iterations of VOLUMES have been presented at the Icebox Project Space in Philadelphia, PA, and at The Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, FL. This Spring, Masch will bring VOLUMES to Co-Lab Projects by activating the interior of a 40-ft long concrete culvert situated on the organization's property. This site-specific audio-visual installation will feature performances by musicians from the Austin area and abroad. Masch sees the work as an opportunity to experiment with the process and perception of sonic performance: “Every performance is unique because individuals bring their own distinct approach and sensibilities to the table when interpreting this audio-visual interaction.” In curating the performances we have selected participants that represent a broad spectrum of musical cultures and philosophies, as each will approach the audio-visual interaction in their own distinct way.

Ezra Masch is a visual artist and musician from Philadelphia. He creates immersive and interactive installations that break down barriers between sonic and visual artforms. His work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions at The Mattress Factory, The Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Icebox Project Space, MASS Gallery, Tiger Strikes Asteroid Philadelphia, TSA NY, IPCNY, Whitebox (NYC), The Visual Art Center (Austin, TX), and Galleria L’Acquario (Rome, Italy). He received a BFA in Sculpture from the Rhode Island School of Design (2004) and an MFA in Studio Art from the University of Texas at Austin (2012). Masch also attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (2011). He currently lives and works in Austin, TX.

VOLUMES at the Ringling Museum in Sarasota, FL:

will you meet me by the river’s edge
Yeni Mao
Artist in residence exhibition

The sculptural practice of Yeni Mao engages in issues of fragmentation, exploring equations of the body and architecture through restraint, domination and absence. Working with the agency of materials, objects and building systems, his works emphasize the tension between both their embedded and perceived significance. Mao layers his own personal histories over the expansiveness of these concerns. In his new installation at Co-Lab, Mao will engage concepts of animism and ancestral knowledge through ceramic, steel and leather sculptural elements. The installation will pursue ties between the personal, contemporary, and prescient natures of the multivalent symbol of the serpent. 

Yeni Mao was born in Canada, and spent his developmental years in the United States. He received a BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and subsequently trained in foundry work in California, and the architectural industries of New York. In 2016 Mao relocated to Mexico City. Yeni Mao’s work has been featured in numerous international exhibitions. Most recently, Mao opened a public sculpture with Brooke Benington in London, presented the solo exhibitions "I desire the strength of nine tigers" at Fierman Gallery in New York, and “vol. 2: cabal” at PAOS in Guadalajara, Mexico. Among the many group exhibitions he has participated in are “Otrxs Mundxs“ at Museo Tamayo in Mexico City, “Transnational” at Proxyco and “The Waste Land” at Nicelle Beauchene in New York; and The IX Bienal De Artes Visuales Nicaraguenses in Nicaragua. Mao is a recipient of the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant 2021, and has been awarded multiple residencies including Casa Wabi in Mexico, The Lijiang Studio and Red Gate Gallery in China, The Fountainhead Residency in Miami, OAZO-AIR in Amsterdam, and Flash Atöyle in Turkey. Mao’s work has been written about in The New York Times, Time Out New York, The Advocate, The Village Voice, and the Bangkok Post. In February 2022 he will open his next solo exhibition at Campeche in Mexico City.


Special thank you to Armadillo Clay, East Side Pot Shop, Genna Williams, and Habitable Spaces for their assistance and generosity.

9/11 Memorial: The 20 Year Anniversary
Claude van Lingen

September 11th - 18th, 2021
Viewable during hours and by appointment
Open hours and closing: Saturday, September 18th, 12-6pm

Co-Lab Projects @ Glissman Road
5419 Glissman Road, Austin, TX 78702

Claude van Lingen’s 9/11 Memorial honors those who died on September 11, 2001 in the World Trade Center, Pentagon, and Pennsylvania tragedies and pays homage to those who died in the ensuing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The exhibition centers around two large drawings in which the names of the 2,753 victims of the World Trade Center were written one over the other, in Claude’s signature style, causing the paper to shed and tear. Extending from this focal point are several other drawings memorializing those who died in the Pentagon attack (125), the Pennsylvania crash (39), as well as works commemorating those who died in the wars since October 7, 2001 in Afghanistan (about 2,500) and Iraq (over 4,000). The names of the latest deaths are regularly updated and written in performance at the openings of 9/11 commemorative exhibitions.

During this memorial exhibition, visitors will be asked to collaboratively create an artwork by writing the names of the victims killed in the 9/11 attacks on a large piece of paper then sign and date their action on another. The signatures will be attached to the back of the artwork and framed.

“I want to thank Sean Gaulager, Austin Nelsen, Leslie Moody Castro, Vladimir Mejia, Chris Burch and the whole team at Co-Lab Projects for presenting this memorial exhibition as well as Dr. Cynthia Playfair and Sherry Keller for lending these works for exhibition commemorating the horrific event that we witnessed personally.” - Claude van Lingen

Claude van Lingen was born in 1931 in Vereeniging, South Africa. He studied at the Johannesburg College of Art and, in 1952, was awarded the National Teacher’s Diploma in Art. After teaching high school for 12 years Claude was appointed Chairman of the Teacher Training Department at the Johannesburg College of Art, and in 1975, Chairman of the Fine Art Department. His application of the principles of the highly successful Perceptual Studies course he designed to his own work led to his winning the prestigious Ernest Oppenheimer Memorial Trust Award and representing South Africa at the 1975 São Paulo Biennial.

In 1978 Claude left South Africa and settled in New York. He regularly exhibited in solo and group exhibitions, most notably, in 1991, being invited to show at the prestigious John Weber Gallery. During the 1990s he was represented by the Vera Engelhorn Gallery. In 2005 Claude moved to Austin, TX where he has exhibited regularly, most notably with Co-Lab Projects, has received awards from The Chronicle and had a work acquired by the Blanton Museum of Art.

Since 1980 various incarnations of his 1000 Years From Now theme have been shown in galleries in the USA,Canada, and in the Johannesburg Art Museum. His work is in the permanent collections of the Musée des Art Decoratiefs de la Ville de Lausanne, Switzerland, The Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, Texas, and in the Johannesburg, Durban, and Hester Rupert Art Museums, South Africa.

NI DE AQUI, NI DE ALLA
Analuz Guerra
Curated by Rebecca Marino

July 3rd - 24th, 2021
On view Saturdays from 12-6 pm and by appointment
Opening Reception and Co-Lab’s 13th Birthday Party: July 3rd, 4-10 pm
(See event guidelines below)

Co-Lab Projects @ Glissman Road
5419 Glissman Road, Austin, TX 78702

In the Aztec language Nahuatl, Nepantla means “in the middle” or “in-between-ness” often referring to individuals or groups in cultural conflict. As a Mexican American woman, Guerra embraces herself as Nepantlera and digs deeply to deconstruct her identity and upbringing on both sides of the border. In her first solo exhibition, Guerra unearths materials and techniques in thoughtful conversation with her maternal ancestry, both before and after the colonization of Mexico. Harvesting the seemingly small pieces (a puncture, clay, thread, a kernel of corn, etc.) that ultimately connect to a much larger existence, Guerra reignites and reexamines the value of tradition, the inherent mysticism of our roots, and her own physical body as a bridge between cultural realms.

Analuz Guerra is a Mexican American mixed media artist working out of San Marcos. Her work is autobiographical, focusing on the activities of her Mexican family and how they evolved through generations and as they crossed the border. Guerra uses mediums like clay, film, and fibers to explore the storytelling of her family and its connection to the sustainable lifetime our mother’s mothers led. By exploring these activities Guerra comments on the sensory activities that have been lost in her family and her want to relearn her own survival magic.

Click here for exhibition list

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Please observe the following COVID precautions:

• Wear a mask while at the check-in desk/bar and inside the gallery

• No more than 4 individuals inside the gallery at a time

• Social distance while outside and be conscious of others level of comfort regarding proximity and masks

• Come early if you wish to be around less people and come later if you’re comfortable around more people

• We encourage COVID testing before and after the event, testing is available for free through the City of Austin, CVS, and other locations around Austin. www.austintexas.gov/covid-testinfo

A Wished for and Welcome Guest
Featuring Kayla Jones, TJ Lemanski, Ariel Wood, Ted Carey, Rebecca Marino, Jules Buck Jones, Nom Ceramics (Rebeca Milton & Scott Proctor), Alexis Mabry, Emily Lee, Anika Carterfield, Michael Anthony Garcia, Mai Snow, David Culpepper, Valerie Chaussonnet, Ron Geibel, Jeremy Burks, Alex Diamond, Emily Cayton, Amy Scofield, and Robert Jackson Harrington

April 10th - May 22nd, 2021
On view Saturdays from 12-6 pm and by appointment
Closing Reception featuring a screening of our Video Open Call program from 2020: Saturday, May 22nd, 6-10 pm

Co-Lab Projects @ Glissman Road
5419 Glissman Road, Austin, TX 78702

Get the exhibition list here

Read reviews from The Austin Chronicle and Sightlines


1.
They say the number 21 is symbolic of success in the completion of desires, the fulfillment of what is willed. It is the numeric symbol for new beginnings and new changes. They also say it is the weight in grams of the human soul. 

2.
Five concrete cubes fit together to form a tunnel-like structure. Five massive concrete cubes fit together to form a tunnel-like structure, and allow things to move past physical impediments. Five massive, concrete cubes fitted together, above ground form a bridge-like structure that allows for an active process of joining together. These five massive, above ground, bridges of concrete structures are now our conduits, our play between indoors and outdoors, our space coming to life and coming together once more. 

3.
A wish and a guest. A body and an experience, an architectural embellishment, the opacity of public and private desire. Lightness in mass and the play of touch. A wish and a guest. A space to receive and a space to breathe, and a space to share as we learn to share once more. A welcome intimacy of 21 old friends, of 13 years, of five cubes, and grass, and space. Of 13 years of more than 21, all who converge here in this open space of cubes and grass. 

4.
They say the weight of a soul is so much more than just the grams the body expends in the final breath of life. The weight of the soul is everything that came before that packs perfectly into a measurement that we can conceivably understand. That the weight of a soul is determined by the years of new beginnings, changes, will, and success. Weight as measurement is like a space without inhabitants, it cannot be appraised simply by density, but by the lives that bring life to every space. Weight is not a simple number, but the accumulation of them, of everything that operates and has operated in contributing to challenges, successes, of everything beautiful and grotesque. 

5.
Over the past year we have learned to operate in the presence of our absences. We have learned to build solidarity as a community without communing. We have grown resilient in our history. That history brings us to the present, and that present is a space both indoor and out, a space of a yard, of a tunnel, of a cube, of a new site and a new home. Our presence after so much absence is our resilience throughout our past forging with our present as we prepare to welcome once more. 

Text by Director Leslie Moody Castro

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Co-Lab Projects is pleased to announce the opening of “A Wished for and Welcome Guest”, our first exhibition in and around our newly realized culvert gallery at the Glissman property. As a nod to our history, and in the sentiment of gathering our community once more, this reopening exhibition includes 21 artists who have shown with us in the past.

Please observe the following COVID precautions:

• Wear a mask while at the check-in desk/bar and inside the gallery

• No more than 4 individuals inside the gallery at a time

• Social distance while outside and be conscious of others level of comfort regarding proximity and masks

• Come early if you wish to be around less people and come later if you’re comfortable around more people

• We encourage COVID testing before and after the event, testing is available for free through the City of Austin, CVS, and other locations around Austin. www.austintexas.gov/covid-testinfo

Homage
Claude van Lingen with Rebecca Marino, Jozef Winemiller, Laurel Brown, Chris Burch, Austin Nelsen, Vladimir Mejia, and Sean Gaulager

April 4th - 25th, 2020
Opening reception and first painting session: April 4th, 7-11pmPainting sessions occur sporadically during open hours on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays throughout the exhibition
Closing reception and last painting session: April 25th, 5-7pm

Homage is a process-based exhibition conceived by South African artist, and long time Co-Labber, Claude van Lingen. Drawing upon historic traditions of durational performance, live painting, and collaborative art-making, Homage taps seven Co-Lab administrators/artists to participate in the process of repetitive mark-making and meditative contemplation commonly found throughout the arduous works of van Lingen. Often utilizing mediums such as gel medium thickened pigments, charcoal, and graphite Claude composes meticulously layered memorials to the most significant subjects, events, and people affecting his life and our world. Extending this process through collaboration with our team cements Claude’s legacy through our hands and further fulfills his lifelong fascination with the passage of time and its effects on art, society, and human beings. 

During open hours eight artists will contribute layers to eight paintings over the duration of the exhibition. The resulting collaborative works will be auctioned to benefit our programs, artists, and development plans. Homage serves as both a passing of the artistic torch from one generation to another and a display of the mutual admiration, respect, and appreciation shared between Co-Lab Projects and Claude van Lingen. 

“I see the final works made during Homage as a manifestation of the tremendous contribution Co-Lab has made to not only the Austin art community but Austin as a whole.” - Claude van Lingen

Claude van Lingen was born in Vereeniging, South Africa in 1931 and has been producing works of art since 1945. He attended Johannesburg College of Art, Academi Notre-Dame des Champs (Paris), and Pratt Institute (NYC) where he received his MFA. Claude's artwork can be found in the collections of the Blanton Museum of Art in Austin, TX as well as museums in South Africa, such as the Johannesburg Art Gallery, and the Durban Art Gallery. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally including the 1975 Sáo Paulo Biennial, the National Museum in Johannesburg, John Weber Gallery (NYC), Public Image Gallery (NYC), White Box (NYC), as well as many galleries here in Texas including Cinnabar (San Antonio), Pump Project (Austin), Tiny Park (Austin), grayDUCK Gallery (Austin), and Northern-Southern (Austin). Claude has also spent his life educating multiple generations of artists starting at Dr. Malan High School in Meyerton, South Africa, then Johannesburg College of Art where he taught for 14 years. After relocating to the US he continued teaching at the School of Visual Arts (NYC) and most recently was an adjunct professor at Austin Community College. Claude was the recipient of the Austin Critics Table 2013-2014 Artist of the Year Award and the 2017-2018 Solo Exhibition of the Year Award for his retrospective “TIMEKEEPER” produced by Co-Lab Projects.

Rebecca Marino is a visual artist and curator who lives and works in Austin, Texas. Her artwork is primarily focused on cosmic perspective and has been featured in TX National, grayDUCK Gallery, Art Palace, MASS Gallery, Art Souterrain, Newfound Journal, and by the Humble Arts Foundation. Previously the Gallery Director for both Flex Space and Pump Project in Austin she is now the Associate Director for Texas State Galleries and the former co-editor and co-founder of Conflict of Interest, an online publication highlighting literature and visual art in Texas. Rebecca first met and befriended Claude while she was completing her BA at St. Edward’s University and volunteering as a bartender for nonprofit art spaces such as Pump Project and Co-Lab Projects. There she had the privilege of getting to know Claude as he indulged in many glasses of fine wine and one time even a shot block. While Gallery Director for Flex Space, Rebecca had the pleasure of showing Claude’s work in the Eye’s Got It! annual Group Hug!!! exhibition several times and has been an avid admirer of him and his work ever since.

Jozef Winemiller was born and raised in Austin, Texas. He became involved with the Austin art scene at a young age through mentorship with Chris Burch and the Advance Young Artists program at Arthouse, now The Contemporary Austin. Through his involvement in the program and Chris’ guidance, he started volunteering with Co-Lab Projects in 2011. While working with the organization in 2017 Jozef met and worked with Claude van Lingen on “TIMEKEEPER”, Claude’s vast retrospective at DEMO Gallery. Working to sort and pack the many drawings, sketches, and studies to develop the flat-file portion of the show Jozef got to learn about Claude’s early career and the range of work he produced over his lifetime. Jozef currently works in a number of fields including technical theater, art installation/handling, and construction. Interested in assemblage and refuse his artwork utilizes materials such as wood, concrete, metal, joint compound and various other found objects scavenged from construction sites and trash piles around Austin. Musically he creates experimental sound using pick-ups mounted to a bike wheel and can occasionally be found performing at Me-Mer-Mo. These various interests, skills, and desire to create a culturally inclusive atmosphere led him to open and operate a house gallery called Slantspace from 2018-2019, where he worked as the director and bartender. Jozef is currently involved in developing Mothership Studios, a studio and gallery complex in San Marcos, TX, slated to open in the summer of this year.

Laurel Brown is new to the Co-Lab team and is looking forward to getting to know Claude through working on this project. Originally from the Washington, D.C. area, she held positions at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden where she worked on the current exhibition Manifesto: Art x Agency and at Gallery Neptune & Brown. She recently moved to Austin to pursue a graduate degree in modern and contemporary Art History at UT. Laurel’s research focuses on how surveillance is shaped by and interacts with race and gender, and the relationships between technology and poetics. She completed her undergraduate degree at Barnard College, and worked during that time at La MaMa Galleria, the National Museum of African American History and Culture, and Hemphill Fine Arts.

Chris Burch is a Director of Co-Lab Projects and a general scoundrel. He peddles whisky by day and when the opportunity arises makes objects that he and sometimes other people call art. He met Claude van Lingen in the early days of Co-Lab Projects and instantly fell in love with him. He first experienced Claude’s work at Co-Lab in 2011 during his exhibition marking 10 years since the attacks in New York on September 11th, 2001. He was silent and reflective and may have possibly wept. van Lingen’s work so impacted Burch that he vowed to get to know him better and possibly even become his friend. His favorite memories of Claude include a shot luge, all the warm hugs and conversations and the hours spent working with Claude to catalog his life in old photographs for van Lingen’s retrospective TIMEKEEPER at Co-Lab’s DEMO Gallery in 2017. He knew that Claude had lived an extraordinary life but never realized to what degree until that epic session of stories and images. Burch is proud to be called “BUDDY” every time he sees Claude and secretly appreciates when he chastises him for using foul language in “mixed company.” He has always considered Claude to be his “Art Grandfather” and is beyond honored to work beside him and so many other great friends for this show.

Austin Nelsen is the Director of Communication and Development at Co-Lab Projects. He is also a founding member of the curatorial design collective WARES, manages buildings and construction by day, and when time lends itself to such activities, creates conceptual objects and functional works of art. The first time he had the pleasure of meeting and working with Claude, albeit in an incredibly modest capacity, was for van Lingen's September 11th, 2011 "9/11 memorial installation".  Nelsen was immediately taken by the scale and beauty of the work as well as the endurance and conceptual aspects of its creation. Claude's work and near omnipresence at shows and in the community were captivating for Nelsen, and this allure led to countless conversations of life, death, beauty, destruction, and clever limericks that remind you that both nothing and everything matter. Over the years Austin has appreciated a friendship with Claude that he believes rarely comes about more than once in a lifetime and is absolutely humbled to be working with him on a new body of work.

Vladimir Mejia is a Co-Lab Director and multi-discipline artist whose work while rooted in conceptual art attempts to incorporate elements that make his pieces relatable to both audiences versed in art history and those who may be unfamiliar with it. Using interaction, humor, abstraction and writing to tackle politics, race relations, generational divides and the ever-evolving relationship between people and technology. In 2013 a 21-year-old Vladimir was tasked with recording cable television programming for Claude's installation “1000 Years From Now, Now, Now, Now, Now…” at a time when American culture had become less attentive to political discourse. Claude installed many vertical mirrors in the Co-Lab Space while projecting a wide range of programming from news pundits debating the morality of Miley Cyrus to discussions about gun control. It is Claude's openness to the world around us that allows him to create relevant work at any given time in his career. Years later Vladimir was shocked to learn Claude worked as a designer for Scholastic and had a part in creating some of the most iconic covers etched in his mind from reading Goosebumps and Harry Potter books throughout his childhood.

Sean Gaulager met Claude and began to curate his work into exhibitions in 2006 when he relocated to Austin from NYC. Since that time Claude and Sean have worked closely on numerous projects as fellow artists, professional collaborators, and friends with a shared passion for art and politics. The two convene yearly to collaborate on Claude’s 1,000-year paintings which Sean is set to inherit when Claude concludes his work on them. Sean founded Co-Lab Projects in 2008 and currently serves as its Executive Director and Curator. As a co-founder of Pump Project Art Complex in 2005 and Cantanker Magazine in 2006, he has been closely involved with nonprofit art organizations and galleries for the last 15 years. During this span of time, he worked as the Assistant Director of Volitant Gallery, Assistant Preparator at The Contemporary Austin, and independently as a curator, consultant, technician, installer, and documentarian for countless other art organizations and private clients. Sean has served on committees and advisory boards such as the Texas Biennial, The Peoples Gallery at Austin City Hall, East Austin Arts, Conflict of Interest, and will be serving on the Admission Panel for Acre Residency (Chicago) in 2020.

Photo by Jana Birchum from The Austin Chronicle

Darkening Warmth
Elizabeth Schwaiger

Check out the exhibition review from Sightlines.

Elizabeth Schwaiger’s research-based practice exists at the confluence of luxury and disaster. In Darkening Warmth, stand-ins for the accumulated worth of human existence — purpose-driven societies and summits, artwork in the studio or in a collection, focused laborers at their crafts, decadent interior trappings, and other more subtle depictions — all these are brought in Schwaiger’s paintings in raucous collision with their potential demise: flooding, decrepitude, overgrowth, and abandonment. Each of the artist’s works present our best attempts at permanence, at immortality, or even simple long lasting value, in stark contrast to cataclysmic and indifferent powers beyond anyone’s individual influence. Her work brings into appropriate scale our own strivings, and the looming ends to which they might succumb. They are a call to action to a great reprioritization of our aims as individuals and as a society with the chance yet of holding back the tide.

Elizabeth Schwaiger is an Austin Expat now based in Brooklyn. She earned her MFA at the Glasgow School of Art in 2011. Recent projects include Expo Chicago and Untitled San Francisco with Jane Lombard Gallery; Kairos, a solo exhibition at Wild Project in Manhattan’s East Village; and the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Residency Program at Rauschenberg’s studio complex in Captiva Florida. Her work and words have been featured in The Catlin Guide, fields magazine, Floorr, Fusebox Written & Spoken, Newfound, Conflict of Interest, Sightlines, The Austin Chronicle, and several other notable publications. Schwaiger is represented by Jane Lombard Gallery in Chelsea, NYC. Her first solo exhibition with the gallery will be on view this coming January.

Circular Score
CC Calloway, Maia Snow, Hannah Spector, and Anika Todd

February 1st - 29th, 2020
Open Hours: Tuesday - Saturday, 12-6pm

Closing performances by Myf Mars and Bella Cheng, plus readings by Leah Dawson, Kristen Steenbeeke, Tim O'Brien, and Max Seifert: Saturday, February 29th, 5-7pm, BYOB or drinks available at Medici

Circular Score is a collaborative exhibition with video and performance works by CC Calloway, Maia Snow, Hannah Spector, and Anika Todd. The show centers upon a rotating stage -- each artist translating the stage through the lens of their own practice. The culmination of these explorations is a multichannel sound and video piece within Co-Lab Projects, with the stage at the center. The videos portray each artist’s exploration of the stage outside the context of the gallery. What accumulates is the imprint of the object in action and the potentiality of a moving platform. One object becomes many expressions. The multichannel video moves throughout the space, engaging the viewer's body within each performative or digitalized action.

Utilizing the rotating stage as a platform, CC Calloway animates static images, technology, voice, and found objects. Using her hands as an actor and performative tool to weave together a narrative remixing disparate source material.

Maia Snow uses the stage as a space to discuss gender. Through the circular action of binding, Snow moves deeper into their relationship with masculinity and the female body. Snow's piece serves as a personal meditation.

In creating collaborative performances, Hannah Spector uses the stage as a reason for experimental movement and storytelling. Through poetic action, Spector focuses on circular imagery, language, and sound to sculpt disruptive visual poems. Each video is based on her verbal and visual relationship with the other performer.

Anika Todd surveys the circularity of the stage within the digital realm. Using photogrammetry and narrative, she asks what it means to be able to fully see the dimensionality of a person or object. 

Circular Score is conceptually based on the happening Three Evenings on a Revolving Stage, which took place in January 1976 at Judson Memorial Church. Artists Julia Hayward, Nam June Paik, Jean Dupuy, Phillip Glass, Simone Forti, and numerous others created live performances atop a small rotating stage. With this as a launching point, Circular Score explores what happens when a common object is translated through personal tongues in fragmented space.

CC CALLOWAY is an artist and writer based in Austin, Texas. She was born and raised in Augusta, Georgia. CC has exhibited widely across the US, most notably at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia and Whitespace Gallery in Atlanta, Georgia. She has participated in residencies, having most recently finished a fellowship at Oxbow School of Art in the summer of 2019. Recently moving to Austin from Atlanta in 2018, CC was a resident at Atlanta Printmaker’s Studio and a 2017-2018 WonderRoot Hughley Fellow. CC is also an arts writer, contributing to BURNAWAY, Number Inc, and other publications. She has a BFA in printmaking and book arts from the University of Georgia, and is currently an MFA candidate at the University of Texas at Austin. She graduates in spring 2020.

CC’s art practice is interdisciplinary, ranging from traditional printmaking processes, sculpture, and installation, to new media, sound, video, and web-based work. In her work and research, she considers technology’s impact on human communication, relationships, and spirituality. CC has written and self-published four books of poetry, including one book of photography entitled My Favorite Word is Nothing. Find out more at cccalloway.com

MAIA SNOW is a painter. Snow was born in Perm, Russia and moved to America at the age of 13. Currently, they are living in Austin, Texas where they are pursuing an MFA at the University of Texas. Snow’s work celebrates the complexities of queer sexuality, gender, and the non-binary body. They deeply care about language and its ability to shape time, physicality, and openness.  Snow has shown their paintings throughout New England, mostly Maine, and various parts of the Midwest. You can find more at maiasnow.com 

HANNAH SPECTOR is an interdisciplinary video and performance artist, poet, and curator currently residing in Austin, Texas. Spector's work is concerned with confounding our usual ways of seeing and speaking, and in doing so, opening up new possibilities of interaction. Spector has shown at Transformer Gallery (DC), Bunker 2 (Toronto), Gallery at Avalon Island (Orlando), The Museum of Human Achievement (Austin), Crescent (Austin)  among other various and informal venues along the way. She is a current MFA Candidate at The University of Texas at Austin. Spector has a multitude of self-published chapbooks available for electronic perusal at hannahspector.com. 

ANIKA TODD is a sculptor, experience-based researcher, and conservation activist. Her process begins with understanding the specifics of her site; she investigates the hard and soft history of a place, drawing from geology, archeology, and sociology. She then translates this content into work that articulates how the culture and landscape of the space interact. Her current work explores Texas’s culture and policy around land ownership and how such constructs relate to the human longing for wild. 

Todd has created site-specific installations in the US and abroad and exhibited in galleries in Vermont, Boston, Maryland, and Austin. She completed her B.F.A. at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design ‘15. She was the 2015 recipient of the prestigious Godine Travel Award to support a two-month material research trip in Mexico. She has participated in residencies at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Salem Art Works, Monson Arts Center and Haystack School of Craft and Design, and Arquetopia in Puebla MX. Cartterfield has worked extensively as a leader in conservation nonprofits and as a resident coordinator at Salem Art Works. She is currently making work in Austin TX as an MFA candidate at the University of Texas at Austin. Find out more at anikatodd.com