Colloquia Selects Camilla Fasolino and Hayes Conradi Koppelman for Futures 2027

The annual program pairs two distinct practices exploring presence, mediated intimacy, and the material traces of human connection.

WOODSTOCK, VA, UNITED STATES, August 12, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Colloquia is pleased to announce Camilla Fasolino and Hayes Conradi Koppelman as the artists selected for Colloquia Futures 2027. The opening reception begins at 1 p.m. on Saturday, August 7, 2027, at Colloquia in Woodstock, Virginia. The exhibition will remain on view through August 31. Admission is free.

Colloquia Futures is the gallery’s annual exhibition and professional development program for artists at the beginning of sustained professional practice. Each year, two or three artists, typically between eighteen and twenty-five, are selected through rigorous review of their work, intentions, cohesion of practice, readiness for public exhibition, and openness to sustained curatorial dialogue.

Selected artists receive a fully realized exhibition supported by curatorial development, installation planning, professional presentation, marketing, press outreach, documentation, mentorship, and public engagement. There are no application or participation fees, and Colloquia takes no commission on works sold through the Futures exhibition.

“Futures is not an award for promise in the abstract,” said Andrew Ritcheson, co-founder of Colloquia. “It asks artists to bring a serious practice into public view, accept rigorous dialogue, and take responsibility for how the work meets an audience. The support is substantial because the expectations are substantial.”

Fasolino will present While We Are Here, mixed-media paintings developed from temporary shared life in Tokyo. Koppelman will present In the Wind I Once Knew, combining original poetry, digital illustration, found textures, printing, and manual intervention to examine contemporary intimacy and the difficulty of being understood.

The artists are not paired because their work looks alike. Fasolino begins with physical proximity and the momentum produced when different lives briefly occupy the same environment. Koppelman begins with mediated distance, fragmented communication, and the emotional residue of relationships that have ended. Both transform transient human encounters into layered physical surfaces.

“One artist begins with the intensity of being briefly together. The other begins with the difficulty of remaining connected,” Ritcheson said. “Both ask what human contact leaves in its wake.”

Camilla Fasolino: While We Are Here:

Conceived during an intensive period of research in Tokyo following Fasolino’s relocation from Italy, While We Are Here emerged from shared domestic life. Fasolino approaches the home as a temporary field of encounter in which different lives, backgrounds, habits, and histories come into contact.

Italian pigment traditions meet Japanese iwa-enogu, or crushed mineral pigments, while hand-stitched fragments of vintage kimono and obi silks create a structural topography within the painted surface. Figures emerge through saturated fields of color, textile, and pattern while remaining inseparable from their material environments.

Rooted in the Japanese philosophy of ichi-go ichi-e, the recognition that an encounter occurs only once and cannot be duplicated, While We Are Here approaches transience as a demand for attention. It transforms shared life in Tokyo into a broader consideration of presence, impermanence, and the intensity of being alive among others.

Hayes Conradi Koppelman: In the Wind I Once Knew:

At a moment when rapid digital change is reshaping intimacy, In the Wind I Once Knew asks where, and with whom, people are able to belong. Through text, symbolism, and a mixed-media process moving between physical and digital form, Koppelman examines what he calls “faulty connection”: intimacy sought intensely, assembled imperfectly, and left vulnerable to interruption, distance, and misreading.

The works combine textures gathered from daily life, hand-drawn digital illustrations, and typography developed from original poems. Drawing on past relationships and the fragmented communication of contemporary dating, Koppelman considers connection, isolation, and the difficulty of being understood.

Bare trees, crows, skulls, and other images of death and decay recur throughout the series. These motifs connect the ending of a relationship to grief, not by equating the experiences, but by attending to what they can share: absence, disorientation, and loneliness. Text and image complicate one another rather than operating as simple illustration.

Koppelman scans or photographs textures from his surroundings, transforms them into patterns, and combines them with digital drawing, typography, and color. The compositions are printed and reworked with physical media. This passage from material surface to digital construction and back to handmade object parallels a generation’s effort to achieve closeness through technologies that may also increase distance from direct interaction.

Selection, Support, and Succession:

Futures is selective, but it is neither a competition nor a survey of prevailing trends. Applicants are evaluated for clarity of intent, cohesion of work, sustained commitment to practice, readiness for professional exhibition, and openness to critical dialogue. Final confirmation follows a curatorial conversation addressing artistic readiness, practical requirements, and alignment with the program.

Futures artists are expected to engage seriously with the curatorial process, prepare a cohesive and exhibition-ready body of work, collaborate in planning and installation, and participate in the public life of the exhibition.

Following the 2027 presentation, Fasolino and Koppelman will join Colloquia in reviewing applications and helping select the artists invited to participate in Colloquia Futures 2028. Their experience becomes part of a collaborative selection process, creating continuity between cohorts.

“Futures is not a prize handed over and forgotten,” Ritcheson said. “Each cohort is supported, then entrusted. The artists receive a professional platform and, in turn, help Colloquia recognize and select the artists who will follow.”

About the Artists:

Camilla Fasolino, born in Naples, is a mixed-media artist working between Naples and Tokyo. Her practice combines natural pigments and binders on linen with hand-sewn fragments of antique kimono and obi fabrics. She studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Naples from 2019 to 2024.

Hayes Conradi Koppelman is a Boston-based artist and visual storyteller born in Los Angeles. His practice merges physical and digital processes through digitized analog textures, illustration, typography, and narrative construction.

About Colloquia:

Colloquia is a contemporary art gallery and cultural platform presenting ambitious exhibitions by national and international artists. Through exhibitions, commissioned essays, artist dialogues, and interdisciplinary programming, Colloquia places contemporary art in active exchange with ideas, history, and the conditions of the present.

Andrew Ritcheson
Colloquia art LLC
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