This video accompanies the exhibition Return to the Sea: Saltworks by Motoi Yamamoto.

Director & Producer: John Reynolds
Executive Producer: Mark Sloan
Original Score: Bill Carson

Check out CAC.C Studio V’s blog of their design + build process :: http://caccstudiov.com/ 

Sloan has made the Halsey a place to see provocative work, both from South Carolina and from any place that piques his interest. His choices show work that really has few other venues, and Sloan is now curating traveling shows.

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Our next exhibition is Return to the Sea: Saltworks by Motoi Yamamoto. Here are some important dates to remember for this show:

May 17 – 24: Motoi is creating his installation -  we are open to the public – come by and visit!

May 24, 5-7pm: opening reception for Return to the Sea

Saturday, May 26, 5:00pm:

 Interview with CBS Sunday Morning’s Martha Teichener for Spoleto Festival’s Conversations With… series

Simons Center Recital Hall, 54 St. Philip Street

May 25 – July 7: exhibition dates, we are open from 11am to 4pm Monday through Saturday with extended hours until 7pm on Thursdays.

Saturday, July 7, 4:00pm: Public dismantling of the installation. One and all are invited to join us for this integral part of Motoi’s work. We’ll gather salt from the installation, essentially destroying it, and go to the Aquarium Wharf as a group to return the salt to the sea.

We’ve produced a 170-page catalogue chronicling the past 12 years of Motoi’s saltworks and Emmy award-winning filmmaker, John Reynolds has produced a mini-doc about Motoi’s process and the connection between Japanese culture and salt.

FREE guided tours of the exhibition are available by contacting

Lizz Biswell: BiswellL@cofc.edu or 953-4422

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

The centerpiece of the exhibition will be a site-specific installation created entirely out of salt by the artist during his ten day residency at the Halsey Institute. Curated by Mark Sloan, director and senior curator of the Halsey Institute, the exhibition will also feature a series of recent drawings, photography, sketchbooks, a video about the artist, and a catalogue.

Motoi Yamamoto is known for working with salt, often in the form of temporary, intricate, large-scale installations. Salt, a traditional symbol for purification and mourning in Japanese culture is used in funeral rituals and by sumo wrestlers before matches. It is frequently placed in small piles at the entrance to restaurants and other businesses to ward off evil spirits and to attract benevolent ones. Motoi forged a connection to the element while mourning the death of his sister, at the age of twenty-four, from brain cancer and began to create art out of salt in an effort to preserve his memories of her. His art radiates an intense beauty and tranquility, but also conveys something ineffable, painful, and endless.

Motoi views his installations as exercises that are at once futile, yet necessary to his healing. An important aspect of the installation is the dismantling of his work at the end of the show and delivering the salt back to water, usually in collaboration with the public; hence, the title Return to the Sea. During gallery hours, 11am to 4pm, on the last day of the exhibition, Saturday, July 7, the public can visit the installation and gather a small amount of the salt. Motoi recognizes that salt is a vital part of many living things and that this mineral could conceivably enter and leave multiple organisms throughout the planet over the span of time. According to curator Sloan, “each grain of salt contains its own history and trajectory. Something so seemingly common becomes a metaphor for the evanescence and transience of human life”.

ABOUT MOTOI

Motoi Yamamoto is an internationally renowned artist who calls his native Japan home. He was born in Onomichi, Hiroshima in 1966 and received his BA from Kanazawa College of Art in 1995. He has exhibited his award-winning creations around the globe in such cities as Athens, Cologne, Jerusalem, Mexico City, Seoul, Tokyo, and Toulouse. He was awarded the Philip Morris Art Award in 2002 as well as the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant in 2003. Although he participated in a group exhibition that same year at New York’s P.S. 1, his work has yet to be widely seen in the United States.

Motoi says, “Drawing a labyrinth with salt is like following a trace of my memory. Memories seem to change and vanish as time goes by; however, what I seek is to capture a frozen moment that cannot be attained through pictures or writings. What I look for at the end of the act of drawing could be a feeling of touching a precious memory.”

Motoi Yamamoto has had very little exposure in the United States with the exception of his participation in the Halsey Institute’s group exhibition Force of Nature in 2006 and a group show at P.S. 1 in New York City in 2003. For Return to the Sea, Yamamoto will travel to each venue on the exhibition tour to create a site-specific salt installation in tandem with the drawings, photography, sketchbooks, video, and catalogue. The Halsey Institute’s goal is to introduce the work of this artist to a much broader audience, create a lasting document in the expansive catalogue, and provide an indelible vision of the artist’s unique process through the video.

THE PLATFORMS

Motoi and the Halsey are collaborating with the Clemson Architecture Center in Charleston’s (CAC.C) Studio V Design and Build class to create two viewing platforms for the installation. This will be the fifth collaboration between the Halsey Institute and CAC.C’s Studio V class. The students, led by Ray Huff and David Pastre, will design and build a large platform in the Halsey’s main gallery to provide visitors with multiple vantage points of the large saltwork. The students will also build an outdoor viewing platform for the gallery window fronting Calhoun Street, providing curious passers-by with a glimpse of the installation 24 hours per day.  These platforms will be in use during the run of the exhibition and also for Yamamoto’s residency, May 17- 24.

Studio V will be keeping a blog of their process and the public can follow their progress by visiting their blog:  www.CACCSTUDIOV.com

EXTRAS

CBS News journalist Martha Teichner will interview Motoi as a part of Spoleto Festival USA’s Conversations With series.  This free event will take place in the in the Recital Hall of the Simons Center for the Arts, 54 St. Philip Street, at 5:00pm on Saturday, May 26^th.  There will also be free audio tours, free guided exhibition tours and the opportunity for the public to participate in the ceremonial dismantling of the saltwork at 4pm on the final day of the exhibition, Saturday, July 7. The Halsey Institute will also produce a free gallery guide that outlines the basic concepts behind Yamamoto’s unique work along with a brief curatorial statement by Sloan and a biography of the artist.

The catalogue includes essays by Sloan and Mark Kurlansky, author of the New York Times best seller, Salt: A World History. The video will include interviews with Yamamoto at his studio in Kanazawa, Japan, insight into his creative process, still images and time-lapse videos of many of his previous installations, and an overview of the fascinating history of salt in Japanese culture.

This project has received support from the Asian Cultural Council, the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

This will be a very exciting and interactive exhibition – I hope you can join us for the events and excitement!