Nuts Society T-Shirt Center

The Cincinnati Arts Association’s Weston Art Gallery in the Aronoff Center for the Arts announces three new exhibitions: Cartographic Exhaustion, a new series of paintings by Cincinnati artist Charles Grund reflecting the paradoxes inherent in our motor-driven society; Inner Sanctums, Urban Medals and Other Short Subjects, a provocative body of work by Thom Shaw investigating social and political challenges within the African-American community; and Nuts Society T-Shirt Center, a site-specific installation guised as a retail operation by the Thai artist-collective Nuts Society that seeks to integrate art into everyday consumer-based activities.

Nuts Society, an artist collective formed in 1998 and based in Bangkok, Thailand, seeks to subtly merge art into consumer-based activities. The collective’s aim is to raise social consciousness and promote social responsibility by engaging the public through their daily habits.

The Nuts Society T-Shirt Center will effectively create a temporary retail center in the highly-visible public setting of the Weston Art Gallery’s street-level exhibition space. The t-shirt center will offer for sale a variety of t-shirts designed by the collective that features Thai script with English translations that convey positive social messages such as honesty, responsibility and concern. By employing commercial advertising techniques and creating a convincing retail environment Nuts Society asks us to reexamine our consumer-based habits and social re-sponsibilities. This exhibition is partially funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Additional support for this exhibition has been provided by Mary Baskett and City Lights Neon. Nuts Society also has a website you can visit at www.nuts-society.org