"Loud Eats Loud" 3D Art Piece

By: Nick Butcher & Nadine Nakanishi
Date: 2019

Media: 10-color screen print on MDF, laser cut
Size: 16 x 20 inches (unassembled)

Edition: 12, signed and numbered
Collections: University of Northern Iowa

About:

Sonnenzimmer is the collaborative practice of artists Nick Butcher & Nadine Nakanishi. We began working together in the early 2000’s combining our love for visual art, typography, graphic design, printmaking, and music in the form of screen printed concert posters. Supported by Chicago’s thriving improvised music community, we developed an experimental approach to graphic expression that tested the limits of abstraction, legibility, communication, and the medium of print. 

This approach soon gave way to deeper investigation of the nature of graphic expression at large. Having created thousands of graphic images, we began to ask ourselves “what is this stuff?” and “what role does it play in society?”. 

We had a hunch that something lay just beneath the surface of human-made graphics that had yet to be formulated. This curiosity has led us to research graphics in the natural world, contemporary advances in imaging, indigenous cosmologies, experimental physics, and beyond. 

Amidst this, our graphic practice has grown to include exhibitions, publishing, performance, commissioned graphic design, and even music. Through each of these respective outputs, our core concern remains. We’ve come to view graphics as a fluid social membrane that allows humanity to think together beyond the individual. Graphics are an augmented collective reality that each of us lay claim to. Our work seeks to illuminate and make sense of this space. 

As the world grows increasingly graphic through the proliferation of digital interfaces and innovations in print and imaging technology, it’s important that we continue to question the nature of the medium. What we choose to contribute to this social membrane has the capacity to shape our collective reality, so the stakes are high. 

To question the water is to swim in it.