May 7th - 9th, 2026 The Loren at Lady Bird Lake 1211 W Riverside Dr, Austin, TX 78704
Wednesday, May 6th: Friends Fair Launch Party with Future Front at The Jones Center from 7-10pm Thursday, May 7: VIP Access 5-9pm & Frost Sponsored Party on the rooftop from 8-11pm Friday, May 8 & Saturday, May 9th: Open and free to the public 12-6pm
For Friends Fair 2026 Co-Lab Projects will present paintings by Elizabeth Schwaiger and Jeremy DePrez, plus performance, styling, and services by Sean Ripple.
Elizabeth Schwaiger received her MFA from the Glasgow School of Art in 2011 and currently lives and works in Paris, France. In her decade-long exploration of power dynamics and the climate crises, Schwaiger uses a variegated symbolism of water, fracturing, dimensional overlay, gesture, and dialed levels of representational clarity to construct images suggestive of the interplay among unseen forces that govern our world. She has exhibited in venues in the UK and the USA, including The Walker Gallery National Museum in Liverpool, The Macintosh Museum in Glasgow, The National Portrait Gallery in London, Chapter Arts Centre in Cardiff, Glasgow International, Embassy Gallery in Edinburgh, Blue Star Contemporary in San Antonio, and Co-Lab Projects and GrayDUCK Gallery in Austin. Recent projects include NYC solo exhibition Now & Now & Now at Nicola Vassell and solo exhibition Pressing Shadows at Gana Art in Seoul in 2023, as well as a solo presentation at the Independent art fair presented by Nicola Vassell.
Jeremy DePrez is an American painter and sculptor based in New York and Houston, renowned for his abstract works that transform everyday three-dimensional objects from his immediate surroundings—such as crumpled shirts, aluminum foil, or Post-it notes—into large-scale paintings and sculptures using acrylic, modeling paste, and irregular canvas supports. His practice emphasizes the structural essence and tactile impressions of these mundane items, blending personal history, subtle humor, and references to painting traditions from artists like Alex Hay and Bridget Riley. DePrez has exhibited widely, with solo shows at venues such as Galerie Max Hetzler in Berlin, Zach Feuer in New York, Texas Gallery in Houston, Marinaro Gallery in New York, and Post/Times in New York. He participated in the Chinati Foundation's artist residency in Marfa, Texas, culminating in an exhibition at the Locker Plant in 2015, and has been featured in group exhibitions like Shapeshifters at Luhring Augustine Gallery, and The Shaped Canvas, Revisited at Luxembourg & Dayan. In 2025, his solo exhibition Night Worker: Works on Paper 2018–2025 at Front Gallery in Houston showcased drawings and paintings from his recent practice, highlighting themes of solitude and cultural debris.
Sean Ripple is an artist, writer, and curator based in Austin, TX. His projects are often improvisational and interventionist in nature and rely heavily on social media and the Internet to frame the outcomes of a feverish dedication to an idea. Ripple has been exhibiting with Co-Lab Projects since its founding in 2008. He has mounted exhibitions, projects, and interventions at Neue Welt, Time Being Books, The Contemporary Austin, Pump Project, The Museum of Human Achievement, Wurhaus, The Gatehouse Gallery at Laguna Gloria, inside private homes, numerous big box and department stores, and on internet platforms such as Tumblr, Flickr, Vine, Facebook, and Instagram. Taking inspiration from portrait painting and divination practices like tarot and tea leaf reading, Ripple will host Friends Fair visitors in the booth and style them in fashions drawn from a variety of sources, including his personal collection. Visitors will engage in conversation to develop a look they feel works well for them, and then be given privacy to change into their ensemble. Their fit will be documented, and if the look is purchased, the visitor will be encouraged to walk it around the fair, which can be thought of as a runway for living sculpture.
