SYNCHRONICITY by Charlie Koolhaas

SYNCHRONICITY grows out of a way of seeing developed through more than two decades of photography: a fascination with the unexpected relationships that emerge between seemingly disconnected things. Objects that have arrived independently in the same place suddenly appear to belong together. For a fleeting moment, coincidence produces composition, and the accidental becomes meaningful.

 

The title draws on Carl Jung’s concept of synchronicity: the idea of meaningful coincidence, in which events without an apparent causal relationship nevertheless appear connected through their significance.

 

Across three interconnected bodies of work, Koolhaas explores these unexpected encounters through photography, sculpture and painting. Large format documentary photographs from her archive in China, where she lived for ten years, capture fragments of everyday life in which people, animals, produce, objects and architecture form unexpected visual relationships, often revealing humour and beauty in moments that might otherwise go unnoticed.

 

Her photographs of urban landscapes are transformed into sculptural pieces, translating photographic observations into tangible forms. In her paintings, Koolhaas develops this way of seeing further, painting over her photographs to isolate unexpected encounters and reveal connections that might otherwise remain obscured within the visual noise of everyday life.

 

Together, these works explore the relationship between chance and intention. While photography captures relationships discovered by chance, sculpture gives them physical form, and painting allows them to be isolated, reimagined and reconstructed. Across all three mediums, Koolhaas pursues a central concern of her practice: finding order without arranging it.

 

Underlying the exhibition is the belief that art itself occupies this space between coincidence and intention. By bringing together elements that have no inherent relationship, art creates new connections and possibilities for meaning.

 

SYNCHRONICITY explores a world in which seemingly unrelated things continually find one another, and where meaning resides not necessarily within the individual object, but in the symbolic significance that emerges between things.