Coleman Collins

Coleman Collins is an interdisciplinary artist, writer, and Assistant Professor of Art at the University of California, Irvine, with an additional affiliation as an IDEA fellow at Stony Brook University's Future Histories Studio. His work explores the intersections of physical and digital realities through technological transmission, debt systems, and iterative processes that produce outsized effects over time.

Collins received his MFA from UCLA in 2018, was a 2017 resident at the Skowhegan School for Painting and Sculpture, and participated in the Whitney Museum's Independent Study Program in 2019. His educational background informs his interdisciplinary approach that bridges traditional art forms with emerging technologies.

His research centers on debt and deontology, digital and physical inheritance, and the social production of virtual spaces. Collins investigates how gradual, iterative processes manifest through technological developments and relationships of obligation, working across sculpture, video, photography, and text to synthesize seemingly opposed terms: subject and object; object and image; original and duplicate; freedom and captivity. His practice examines connections between physical reality and its digital approximations, particularly how real and virtual spaces are socially constructed.

Collins' recent exhibition history demonstrates a consistent exploration of AI, digital inheritance, and spatial perception. His work increasingly investigates how digital technologies reshape our understanding of presence, absence, and continuity across physical and virtual realms, with a growing focus on 'latent space' concepts that examine how unseen structures shape visible realities.

• Guggenheim Fellow (2025)
• Graham Foundation research grant (2022)
• New York Foundation for the Arts support
• Cafe Royal Cultural Foundation support

Collins maintains an active international exhibition practice with recent shows at Ehrlich Steinberg (Los Angeles), Brief Histories (New York), Carré d'Art (Nîmes), and Kunsthalle Wien (Vienna). His writing appears in MIT Press, BOMB Magazine, and ESPN publications. His teaching at UC Irvine focuses on interdisciplinary approaches that bridge traditional media with emerging technologies, emphasizing critical engagement with digital culture.

Based in Los Angeles, Collins continues to develop projects exploring technology, memory, and cultural transmission, with his work represented in the permanent collection of the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles.