RICHARDSON, Texas (July 27, 2006) — The School of Arts and Humanities at The University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) today unveiled its 2006–2007 season of visual arts exhibitions, which begins Aug. 25 and runs through next April 13. The exhibits will occupy the Main Gallery of the UTD Visual Arts Building, and all are free and open to the public.
Each showing will feature an opening reception on the first day of the run from 6:30 to 9 p.m., with the exception of TVAA, which has a closing ceremony. Gallery hours are from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Friday and 9 a.m. through 6 p.m. on Saturdays. The gallery is closed Sundays and university holidays.
About the Exhibitions
Feral Nature (Aug. 25–Sept. 27) investigates “the animal,” both literally and metaphorically, through drawing, sculpture, painting, photography and video. This exhibition explores the boundaries between nature and culture and the assumed distance between animal and human behavior. Artists examine the symbolism of the animal body, the tension between wild and domesticated and the clash between opposites of scale, color and context.
Inter-play (Oct. 6–Nov. 10) features a shifting kaleidoscope of ideas, methods and techniques by a varied group of UTD students and graduates. Today’s young artists have grown up under the influence of computers, the Internet and music videos, and now utilize forms of advertising, graphic design, photography and videos in their studio practice, creating an interplay of visual experience. The exhibit, originally created as part of UTD’s Center for U.S. Mexico Studies’ 10 th anniversary celebration held earlier this year, will open at Mexico’s University of Guanajuato on August 17.
Object (Jan. 12–Feb. 16) is a mixed media exhibition where artists create hybrid forms of art that examine the object’s plurality of form in current art practices. Individual works in the show move seamlessly across and between traditional special boundaries: object becomes podium, podium becomes floor, floor becomes wall. “Objects” in the exhibition include video, textile-paintings, three-dimensional photographs, sculpture and pictures spilling over the floor in stuffed animal splendor.
The Texas Visual Arts Association (TVAA) High School Art Competition (Feb. 23–March 11) is an annual competition and exhibition to promote excellence in the visual arts among high school students. S cholarships and prizes will be presented at the awards ceremony/closing reception on March 11 at 2 p.m.
Legacy of Photomontage: Engineering the Photograph (March 16–April 13) contemporary artists expand upon the tradition of photomontage: they infuse their experiments with new cultural influences, adopt critical frameworks for examining their subjects, and continue to discover innovative digital processes for the combination and alteration of photographs. From political critique to the generation of narrative, to a challenge, to generally accepted concepts of reality, this revision of the photograph, accomplished through photomontage, emphasizes the transformation of meaning associated with the original image.
In addition to the professional exhibitions in the Main Gallery, UTD also hosts a student festival at the end of the fall and spring semesters that highlights the work of visual arts students from all areas of the graduate and undergraduate programs. The Fall Arts Festival will run Nov. 16–18 and the Spring Arts Festival, a juried exhibition with an awards ceremony, will run April 19–21.
The Mezzanine Gallery will house student exhibitions by graduate students in partial fulfillment of their Master’s theses, undergraduate students for senior honors projects and for advanced class exhibitions to be opened in conjunction with the exhibitions in the 2006–2007 season. These student exhibitions will be announced at a later date. All programs are subject to change.
Additional information about each event is available on the Arts and Humanities website: http://ah.utdallas.edu/
For information about the many musical, arts, theatre, dance and other performances and exhibitions held throughout the year at UTD, please call 972-UTD-ARTS (972-883-2787) or e-mail utdarts@utdallas.edu. Persons with disabilities needing special accommodations may call 972-883-2982, Texas Relay Operator: 1-800-RELAYVV.
About UTD
The University of Texas at Dallas, located at the convergence of Richardson, Plano and Dallas in the heart of the complex of major multinational technology corporations known as the Telecom Corridor®, enrolls nearly 14,500 students. The school’s freshman class traditionally stands at the forefront of Texas state universities in terms of average SAT scores. The university offers a broad assortment of bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degree programs. For additional information about UTD, please visit the university’s website at www.utdallas.edu.