Diane Marek Series Visiting Artist Events
› Tuesday, Sept. 26: Artists lecture, 5:30 p.m., Benwood Auditorium, Room 230, EMCS Building. The exhibit’s opening reception will follow in Cress Gallery of UTC Fine Arts Center.› Wednesday, Sept. 27: Process and Materials Session, 11 a.m.-noon, Cress Gallery.› Wednesday, Sept. 27: Professionalism Session, 4-5 p.m., Fine Arts Center, Room 356.› Thursday, Sept. 28: Professionalism Session, 12:15-1:30 p.m., EMCS Building, corner of Vine and Palmetto streets, Room 201.All events are free.UTC Fine Arts Center is located at 752 Vine St. and Cress Gallery is inside the Fine Arts Center. The EMCS Building is at 735 Vine St.
Cress Gallery of Art at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga announces that Sonnenzimmer will be the Fall 2017 Diane Marek Visiting Artists in conjunction with their exhibition, Café Avatar, which opens Tuesday, Sept. 26, and continues through Friday, Nov. 3, in the gallery.
Chicago-based publishers, printers, artists and musicians, Nick Butcher and Nadine Nakanishi have worked across numerous media in their decade-long collaboration known as Sonnenzimmer.
Equal parts art and design, their practice remains grounded in the lasting potential of the graphic arts. While exploring the physical and conceptual friction between abstraction and communication, they examine how humanity is being defined by the substrate of media.
Their Cress exhibition, Café Avatar, is a highly original visual manifestation born from their investigations into the role of graphic art and our existence within an accelerating digital climate.
Café Avatar is comprised of original screen and wood-block prints designed and pulled by hand onto nontraditional surfaces, along with sculpture, animation, sound work, illustration and text. It is all new work never before shown. Outside the doors of the exhibit, an additional selection of Sonnenzimmer’s previous objects, printed works and publications will be featured in the lobby cases of the Fine Arts Center.
Nick Butcher and Nadine Nakanishi established their collaboration as Sonnenzimmer in 2006 in Chicago. Initially recognized for their idiosyncratic commissioned screen-printed posters, their practice has morphed into multiple platforms, including exhibitions, performance, publishing and design.
Their exhibit and all Diane Marek Series events are free and open to the public. Gallery hours are 9:30 a.m.-7:30 p.m Mondays-Fridays; 1-4 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays.
After 5 p.m. on weekdays and all day on weekends, visitors to Cress Gallery may park free in any nearby lot not marked “24-hour reserved.” Before 5 p.m. on weekdays, visitors may find limited nearby street parking or park in the Fifth Street Garage near McKenzie Arena for $4 and walk across campus to Vine Street.
For more information about the exhibition and the Diane Marek Series: www.cressgallery.org or call 423-304-9789.