Cress Gallery of Art at The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga presents Greg Smith’s “Breakdown Lane Orrery” through December 9. Smith is the fall semester 2014 Diane Marek Series Visiting Artist.
This exhibition and all Diane Marek Series events are open to the public. Admission is free.
An orrery is a mechanical model of a planetary system typically centered by a sun. “Breakdown Lane” is Smith’s version of this machine as it appears for the first time in that parallel strip along the highway where risk and the unexpected stumble to invent repair and redeem a road trip to the unknown. Smith’s sculptures, drawings, and repurposed objects also serve as props and tools in his associated video. Rich in analogy and metaphor, Smith’s exhibition detours the beaten path to arrive at the intersection of the improbable and the possible.
Untold yards of raw canvas and brightly colored cloth, stitched into complicated layers and shapes on an industrial sewing machine, festoon and visually unite piles of rescued objects and the ruins of a customized car. Dozens of fabricated ruff collars, historically a mark of social standing and now a typical feature in the costume of a jester or clown, double as a personal horizon line when worn by the protagonist of Smith’s video. In this exhibition, objects once symbolic of wealth and leisure are transformed into an extraordinary carnival encampment, the grotto of a wanderer on a quest.
Smith approaches his materials with a nod to scientific method through conjecture, research, calculation, testing, and analysis. His careful choreography relates to the cinematic stage. Props, objects, devices, and machines, are designed and constructed to balance weight and mechanical stress and serve their function before they are moved to location for filming. The question “What’s at risk?” carries an emphatic weight.
In his video, Smith casts himself as the main and solely human character, the artifice mechanic, whose ingenuity and engineering juggles the consequence of failure in an attempt to keep the show on the road. The exhibition will also include cameras, built by Smith from untraditional materials such as linoleum and sewn canvas, employed to record the video itself and featured in the supporting role simultaneously creating video within the video.
While the “Canopy Orrery” slowly rotates in the “Breakdown Lane” of the Main Gallery, a screening of videos from previous projects by Greg Smith will occupy Gallery II. Plan to embark on a journey where reality and fiction converge with science and magic.
A native of Dekalb, Illinois, Smith holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Amherst College, a Ph.D. in Physics from Harvard University, and an MFA from Hunter College, New York, New York. A 2013 John Simon Guggenheim Fellow, Smith was also the recipient of a studio residency from the Manhattan Community Arts Fund in 2010, and 2005 grants from the Rema Hort Mann Foundation, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Center, and the Hunter College Nancy Ashton Memorial Fund.
Cress Gallery hours: Monday – Friday 9:30 a.m. – 7:30 p.m.; Saturday & Sunday 1– 4 p.m.
The Cress Gallery of Art is located in the lobby of the Fine Arts Center of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, 752 Vine Street, at the corner of Vine and Palmetto Streets.
Learn more about the artist and his work.
Read about the Cress Gallery and the Diane Marek Series.
