Landscapes & Mindscapes: Reflections on the Worlds – Gallery in the Round

Landscapes & Mindscapes: Reflections on the Worlds

The Gallery in the Round at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Ames will present Landscapes & Mindscapes: Reflections on the Worlds We Inhabit, a solo exhibition by visual artist and physicist Sebastián Sánchez-Falero, on view from April 4 through June 30. A public reception will be held on Sat., May 2 from 5 to 7 p.m., featuring an artist talk and discussion open to the public.

Bringing together two complementary bodies of work, Landscapes & Mindscapes reflects on the natural and technological environments that shape contemporary life. One series, Endless Horizons: Colors of the Iowa Plains, contemplates the quiet beauty of Iowa’s land, sky, and seasons through photography showcasing light, atmosphere, and human presence. The other, Minds on a Digital Mirror: Exploring the Human Tapestry, uses AI-assisted visual art to explore what it means to be human in an age increasingly shaped by intelligent machines.

Together, the exhibition places Iowa’s physical landscape in dialogue with the conceptual and technological worlds we now inhabit. It draws attention to the quiet beauty of the land while opening space to reflect on the less visible terrains of contemporary existence: memory, imagination, data, simulation, and the digital systems that increasingly surround us and accelerate human experience. As Sánchez-Falero puts it, the exhibition grows from the question, “What does it mean to be human here and now?” Holding these realities in the same room, Landscapes & Mindscapes invites viewers to consider both the outer landscapes we dwell in and the inner or constructed mindscapes through which we make meaning.

At the same time, the exhibition engages the question of art in the age of AI. With these technologies now firmly part of contemporary life, and the genie already out of the bottle, Sánchez-Falero approaches artificial intelligence not simply as a tool, but as a new mimetic medium: one that emerges from human design and human data, and that can therefore function as a technological mirror of contemporary culture and consciousness and biases.

Through the exhibition and artist talk, he offers an accessible introduction to AI and large language models while reflecting on mimesis across painting, photography, and AI-generated imagery, helping audiences place these new tools in a broader historical and artistic perspective. Sánchez-Falero is a visual artist and physicist based in Ames, Iowa. Across his practice, he explores identity through portraiture of life, spaces, and moments, often working at the intersection of photography, language and technology. His work moves between natural and conceptual space, asking how human beings dwell in the world, how they represent it, and how they continually reshape both their environments and themselves.

The exhibition is on view at Gallery in the Round, Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Ames,
1015 Hyland Ave., Ames, IA.

Viewing hours are Monday and Tues., 9 a.m. to noon, and Wed. and Thurs., 1 to 4 p.m., or by appointment by calling 515-292-5960.

Media Contact:
Sebastián Sánchez-Falero
515-372-5661
sfs@sebastiansanchez.net
www.SebastianSanchez.net