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“Buddy Can You Spare a Meme” : Mark Flood
Mar
21
to Apr 25
Front Page, Upcoming

“Buddy Can You Spare a Meme” : Mark Flood

Buddy Can You Spare a Meme
Mark Flood
featuring a performance by Victoria Shen in partnership with Fusebox Festival

March 21st - April 25th, 2026
On view Saturdays, 12-6pm
5419 Glissman Road, Austin, TX 78702

Events:

VIP/Members Exhibition Preview
at Co-Lab Projects' Culvert Gallery, 5419 Glissman Rd
Saturday, March 21st, 6-7pm

Public Exhibition Reception
at Co-Lab Projects' Culvert Gallery, 5419 Glissman Rd
Saturday, March 21st, 7-11pm (Please RSVP)

Victoria Shen in conversation with Hannah Spector
The Department of Art and Art History at UT Austin
Thursday, April 16th, time TBA

VIP/Members Meet & Greet with Victoria Shen
Location TBD
Thursday, April 16th, 8-10pm (Become a member to attend)

Victoria Shen Performance in collaboration with Fusebox Festival
at Co-Lab Projects' Culvert Gallery, 5419 Glissman Rd
Saturday, April 18th, 9pm (Get sliding scale tickets)

In spring 2026, Co-Lab Projects will mount “Buddy Can You Spare a Meme” a solo exhibition in the Culvert Gallery featuring new work by Houston-based visual provocateur Mark Flood and a performance by San Francisco sound artist Victoria Shen (A.K.A. Evicshen).

Mark Flood returns to Co-Lab Projects after 13 years with an exhibition opening Saturday, March 21, 2026. In this latest work, Flood dives headfirst into the shallow end of memes. He again turns his caustic, mocking eye to his favorite subject matter–the contemporary art world. Flood takes one of the most prevalent forms of humor in the digital era and perverts it into culture warfare body horror aimed squarely at the art world itself. Memes, typically viewed on a screen where no one can judge you for your private amusement, will now be blazoned onto large canvases and displayed graffiti-style on the gallery walls. This body of work, designed to offend, dares you to laugh in public.

Under his many monikers, Flood has always been many things at once: painter, writer, musician, punk, satirist, champion and critic of the art world he inhabits. His work strips away pretension and mocks self-importance, using dark humor to defang the systems that try to mold us. He refuses easy political positions or earnest messaging. Instead, he invites us to laugh at ourselves—art-worlders and civilians alike—exposing the absurdities of contemporary culture through distortion and subversion. If you can laugh about the darkest aspects of life, this work suggests, you can neuter them.

On Saturday, April 18, 2026, in collaboration with Fusebox Festival, Co-Lab will present a performance inside the Flood installation by San Francisco-based sound artist Victoria Shen (a.k.a. Evicshen). Shen makes noise—the chaotic, physical, body-rattling kind that you feel in your stomach. Working with analog modular synthesizers, vinyl/resin records, and self-built electronics, she defies conventional harmony and rhythm for extreme textures and corporeal tones. Her sounds oscillate between moments of restraint and swells of frenetic and confrontational movement. 

Together, Flood and Shen operate on the same adversarial frequency. Both artists weaponize humor and chaos against established systems—he through visual mockery, she through sonic assault. Where Flood asks you to laugh at the art world's absurdities, Shen makes you feel the discomfort of sound pushed past its breaking point. Neither artist offers you comfort or easy answers. They offer you a mirror, amplified and distorted, reflecting back the ridiculous machinery of contemporary culture at volumes impossible to ignore.

Mark Flood is an interdisciplinary artist known for his irreverent, punk-inspired critiques of the art world, mass media, and consumer culture based in Houston, TX.

Mark Flood’s work has been widely exhibited in solo and group shows across the United States and internationally. His solo exhibitions include Lace Paintings at Marty Walker Gallery in Dallas (2006), American Fine Art in New York (2004), and Peres Projects in Berlin (2015). He has also shown at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (2016) and Karma in New York (2020). Group exhibitions have included Pretty Ugly, co-hosted by Gavin Brown’s Enterprise and Maccarone in New York, as well as numerous other shows throughout his career.

Flood’s work is held in the permanent collections of prestigious institutions, including the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, the Dallas Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, and The Menil Collection. His work is also part of the Rubell Family Collection in Miami and international collections such as the Taguchi Art Collection in Tokyo.

Victoria Shen (A.K.A. Evicshen) is a sound artist, experimental music performer, and instrument-maker based in San Francisco, CA. 

Shen has performed solo across North America, Japan, China, Mexico, Australia/NZ, the UK, and Europe, as a member of the turntable trio with Mariam Rezaei and Maria Chavez, as a member of hip hop group 1 Above Minus Underground. Shen has also collaborated with Mix Master Mike of the Beastie Boys and groups such as the Kronos Quartet, Matmos, clipping, Acid Mothers Temple, and Mike Watt and the Missing Men. Some notable venues in which she has performed include Boston City Hall, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, ISSUE Project Room NY, DOMMUNE Tokyo, Petreon Sculpture Park Cyprus, MUNCH Museum Oslo, Art Gallery of NSW Sydney, and Museo d'Arte Orientale Turin. Shen has also been an artist in residence at Elektronmusikstudion EMS Stockholm SE, WORM Rotterdam NL, Kurimanzutto New York US, The Royal Danish Academy Copenhagen DK, and AUDIUM San Francisco US, Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts Omaha US, and Headlands Center for the Arts US, and Audio Foundation Auckland NZ.

Shen currently works at the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics Stanford and School of Visual Arts NY. Shen is also a serving member of the Board of Directors for The Lab in San Francisco.

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Performance by Victoria Shen
Apr
18
9:00 PM21:00
Front Page, Upcoming

Performance by Victoria Shen

Victoria Shen Performance
Inside Mark Flood’s exhibition Buddy Can You Spare a Meme
Presented in partnership with Fusebox Festival

Co-Lab Projects' Culvert Gallery, 5419 Glissman Rd
Saturday, April 18th, 9pm (Get sliding scale tickets)

In her live performances, she proposes an exploration between meaning and non-meaning through the physical activation of noise tropes. For recent performances, she pioneered the use of Needle Nails, acrylic nails with embedded turntable styluses, which allow her to play up to five tracks of a record at once. Needle Nails, Levitating speaker, and her Noise Combs are some of the objects created by her as part of an extensive repertoire of innovations in the design of sound augmentation. These sculptural elements invite the viewer to unpack one’s relationship with the material possibilities for creating sound. The appendage-like instruments and objects she makes, exemplify Shen’s ability to embody through sound her interest in the tension created by opposition: control and chaos, the unique and the mass produced, the practical and the absurd.

Victoria Shen (A.K.A. Evicshen) is a sound artist, experimental music performer, and instrument-maker based in San Francisco, CA. 

Shen has performed solo across North America, Japan, China, Mexico, Australia/NZ, the UK, and Europe, as a member of the turntable trio with Mariam Rezaei and Maria Chavez, as a member of hip hop group 1 Above Minus Underground. Shen has also collaborated with Mix Master Mike of the Beastie Boys and groups such as the Kronos Quartet, Matmos, clipping, Acid Mothers Temple, and Mike Watt and the Missing Men. Some notable venues in which she has performed include Boston City Hall, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, ISSUE Project Room NY, DOMMUNE Tokyo, Petreon Sculpture Park Cyprus, MUNCH Museum Oslo, Art Gallery of NSW Sydney, and Museo d'Arte Orientale Turin. Shen has also been an artist in residence at Elektronmusikstudion EMS Stockholm SE, WORM Rotterdam NL, Kurimanzutto New York US, The Royal Danish Academy Copenhagen DK, and AUDIUM San Francisco US, Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts Omaha US, and Headlands Center for the Arts US, and Audio Foundation Auckland NZ.

Shen currently works at the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics Stanford and School of Visual Arts NY. Shen is also a serving member of the Board of Directors for The Lab in San Francisco.



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June + July #bitres Artist: Bethany Johnson
Jun
1
to Jul 31
Current, Front Page

June + July #bitres Artist: Bethany Johnson

Bethany Johnson
#bitresBethanyJohnson

Bethany Johnson is an artist based in Austin, Texas, working in a cross-disciplinary practice that centers drawing, sculpture, and scientific inquiry. Johnson received an MFA in painting from the University of Texas at Austin in 2011. Her work is represented by Moody Gallery in Houston, and her artwork has been featured in New American Paintings, Hyperallergic, and HuffPost, among others. Johnson has held residencies at Denkmalschmiede Höfgen in Grimma, Germany, Institut für Alles Mögliche in Berlin, and Joshua Tree National Park Artist in Residence, and is a recipient of a 2023 Pollock-Krasner Foundation Artist Grant.

Instagram: @bethany._.johnson

Links: bethanyjo.com

About #bitres:
As a means of expanding Co-Lab Project's programming into the digital realm, artist/curator Vladimir Mejia selects artists to participate in an Instagram hosted month-long residency. Artists are given full control of the @colabprojectsbitres Instagram account, and all images posted by the artist are categorized by hashtags representing the artist name in residency. Original concept by Sean Ripple.

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OPEN CALL FOR NEW ARTISTS - DEADLINE EXTENDED TO APRIL 20TH
Feb
1
to Apr 20
Front Page, Current

OPEN CALL FOR NEW ARTISTS - DEADLINE EXTENDED TO APRIL 20TH

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

Open call dates: February 1st - March 31st, 2025
Application Deadline: Midnight, March 31st
Application review and notification: By the end of April
Exhibition dates: June 14th - July 19th, 2025

Co-Lab Projects invites all Austin area artists who have NOT physically exhibited with Co-Lab 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 a Curatorial Committee 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.

*Note: The last two years of this application/program have produced group exhibitions.

CLICK HERE TO APPLY! What are you waiting for huh?!

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“Epiphany” Artist Talk moderated by Justine Kurland
Oct
19
7:00 PM19:00
Front Page, Upcoming

“Epiphany” Artist Talk moderated by Justine Kurland

Photo curtesy of Rosemary Haynes

“Epiphany” Artist Talk 
Featuring Justine Kurland in conversation with Michelle Marchesseault, Diana Welch, Kate Csillagi, and curator Alyssa Taylor Wendt

Saturday, October 19th, 7pm, (please RSVP)
Co-Lab Projects, 5419 Glissman Rd, Austin, TX 78702

Join us at the Culvert Gallery for another look at “Epiphany” and a conversation moderated by esteemed artist Justine Kurland. In this talk, Justine hopes to open a discussion about themes and processes in each artist's work and in relation to one another. Justine echos the question underlying the exhibition “Epiphany” and the mission of Co-Lab Projects- How do we support artists engaged in radical experimentation and play?

Justine Kurland is an artist known for her utopian photographs of American landscapes and the fringe communities, both real and imagined, that inhabit them. Her early work comprises photographs, taken during many cross-country road trips, that counter the masculinist mythology of the American landscape, offering a radical female imaginary in its place. Her recent series of collages, SCUMB Manifesto, continues to make space for women by transforming books by canonized male photographers through destruction and reparation. Kurland’s work has been exhibited at museums and galleries in the United States and abroad. www.justinekurland.com

Diana Welch is a multidisciplinary artist based in Austin, TX, whose body of work spans sculpture, music, and writing. A self-taught ceramicist, she has exhibited in the US and Europe as one-half of the collaborative Mother of God. Her vessels reference classical ancient clay forms imbued with unexpected flare and subversion through interaction, collaboration, and functionality. As a musician, she has released several recordings, both solo and as a member of the band Stormshelter. A reporter, editor, and author, her extensive writing has been reviewed in Vanity Fair and elsewhere.

Kate Csillagi is an interdisciplinary artist hailing from Austin, TX. She attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Evergreen State College where she studied fiber art, printmaking,  and bookmaking. Her work has evolved over the years to include drawing, mural work, fabric tapestry, and installation. She was also a founding member of ICOSA, an artist-run collective and gallery in East Austin. Csillagi’s work is disruptive and whimsical, constructing unexpected narratives that star her anthropomorphic characters within supernatural scenes. Her work dismantles reality through watery dreamscapes and colorful illustrations, providing refuge from the monotony of modernity. 

Michelle Marchesseault splits time between Austin, TX, where she paints, and New York City, where she designs art and interiors for restaurants, television, movies, and the stage. She attended Herron School of Art in Indianapolis for painting and has been creating visuals and environments for over 20 years. The majority of Marchessault’s work fluctuates between studies of color and design that she called “twist” paintings and lush mannerist landscapes where nature is simultaneously gushing with beauty and brutality.

Mimi Bowman was born in Texas in 1989. She graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in 2022 with a degree in archaeology and Middle Eastern studies. Bowman is currently abroad pursuing an MA in archaeology at the University College of London, hoping to work in Karez rehabilitation in northern Iraq. In 2023, she curated Oshay Green and Isabel Legate’s dual exhibition Holometabolism at Martha’s Contemporary, and her collaborative video work with Jonny Negron was included in Electricity · Shadow at Château Shatto.

Alyssa Taylor Wendt is a multidisciplinary artist, filmmaker, and curator working in Detroit and Austin, Texas. Her recent projects address mysticism, the architecture of memory, and the decodified strata of history using video, ceramics, sculpture, painting, and installation. Earning her MFA from Bard, she has shown and performed internationally since 2004. She recently completed a second master’s degree in museum studies from Harvard and plans to open a small non-profit museum of cultural artifacts in 2026.

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Summer Open Call
Apr
25
to May 26
Front Page, Current, Upcoming

Summer Open Call

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

Open call dates: April 25th - May 25th, 2024
Application review and notification: End of May
Exhibition dates: June 15th - July 20th, 2024

Co-Lab Projects invites all Austin area artists who have NOT physically exhibited with Co-Lab 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.

Please following the link below to apply. What are you waiting for huh?!

Apply Here!
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Co-Lab Book Club
Oct
13
to Nov 13
Current, Front Page, Upcoming

Co-Lab Book Club

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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.

Become a member

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.

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Jun
26
to Dec 11
2021, Front Page

"Serpentine and Sporous" : Suzanne Wyss

IMG_2483.jpg

Serpentine and Sporous
Suzanne Wyss

Commissioned by Springdale General
Curated and produced by Co-Lab Projects

On view permanently 24/7, no appointment required
Springdale General (between buildings 7 & 8)
1023 Springdale Road, Austin, TX 78721

This concrete installation speaks to growth and movement in a rigid world. The walkway slithers through the spires that are based on fungal fruits, acting as a symbol for cleansing the earth and a place to cleanse the mind.

Suzanne Wyss is a multi-disciplinary artist focusing on large-scale installation and sculpture, transforming industrial materials into organic forms. Wyss received her MFA in sculpture from Indiana University in 2013 and her BFA in sculpture and ceramics from the University of Minnesota, Duluth in 2010. She originates from the Black Hills of South Dakota. Wyss has shown her art throughout the Midwest and as far away as Osaka, Japan. Since becoming a Texan in 2013 her most notable previous works are a permanent installation at Thinkery ATX, and a site-specific installation for the Facebook Artist in Residence Program. Wyss is currently working towards her Masters in Landscape Architecture at the University of Texas at Austin to further explore the integration between sculpture and landscape.

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