We are excited to announce our collaborative exhibition Apophenia with ICOSA in Austin, Texas. This exhibition features artists from our fifth Cohort and CU staff members and has been thoughtfully curated by Sean Michael Gaulager.

Participating Artists: Alvaro Arroliga, Anna Redman, Anthony TungNing Huang, Bao Nghi Ngo, Cat Rigdon, Chukwudi Ukonne, Eliana Miranda, Felicia Jordan, Jacob Taylor Gibson, Jordan Funk, Jose Vasquez Ramirez, Karla Ramirez-Santin, Katherine Covarrubias, KevRon Madden, Leigh Ann Williams Hickey, Maria Esswein, Matthew Jones, MCat Davis, and Ray Albarez.

Curator Statement from Sean Michael Gaulager:

Apophenia is the tendency to see meaningful connections or patterns in unrelated or random things, even when no such connections exist. It's a normal human tendency to seek patterns and order, but in some cases, it can lead to misinterpretations or the formation of false beliefs. Sometimes called "patternicity," it's a natural human drive to find meaning and structure in the world.

We live in an increasingly subjective and atomized era, each of us is algorithmically fed a bespoke truth as consensus reality dissolves right in front of our eyes. What then remains? The works in this exhibition touch upon our attempts to place ourselves within this fragmented system, to grasp at something true within the continually unfolding chaos of our age.

The title of the exhibition, borrowed from one of Katherine Covarrubias’s artworks, captures the essence of what is required of a curator (or juror) asked to assemble an exhibition from a set of submissions. When reviewing them, you begin to see conceptual links between the works, sometimes explicit but more often imagined. The perceived need for cohesion takes hold of your thought process as you weave narratives together in your mind. Like that Charlie Day meme, suddenly you have a bunch of red string connecting all the dots, answering all the questions, solving the riddle of how it’s ALL CONNECTED. But is it real? Does anyone else see the pattern? Do YOU, dear viewer?