I’m interested in how we need to find structure, create names, write theories, and tell stories to be at ease with the world around us. An exhibition by United Visual Artists at 180 Strand apparently is in this vein. The work of UVA is said to reflect “the cultural frameworks and symbolic systems that shape and govern our reality.” The works in this show, called Synchronicity, are collaborations with artists across media. The captions are a bit pretentiously detailed about what the art represented, as if the curator is not confident a meaning will emerge. Less might have been more. Overall the works felt soul-less. More engineering than art. Maybe that was the point.

The first image is Present Shock II: “Juxtaposing life-changing global events with with the banal trivia of everyday existence, the work is a manifestation of the “context collapse that defines our present moment, disrupting our sense of time, coherence, narrative and consensus reality.” [from the wall caption]

The second, Ensemble, is a reflection on human gesture and innate musicality and how this changes over time. It was the most visually interesting, the least coherently explained, and therefore the most ambiguous, in my view. I did like the way the images looked pixelated and as if disintegrating.

The third image is Chromatic exploring the interaction of form, color and sound. A piano composition filled the room while colors and images flashed by on a wall sized screen.

The fourth is Music Universalis a kind of music of the spheres in smokey blue light.