Now exhibiting at the Halsey Institute is Aurora Robson: The Tide is High and Chris Jordan: Midway. Aurora Robson uses pre-recycled plastics to create large scale sculptures and installations. Robson’s art prevents plastic entering into the waste stream because they are being repurposed into artwork. Her work has an organic aesthetic that further connects her projects to nature. Chris Jordan’s art concentrates on displaying the consequences of mass consumption and plastic waste through photography and collage. Jordan’s work is confronting and sets the stage for conversation about how humans are affecting the planet. Plastic pollution is a growing global crisis and both Robson and Jordan create visual forms to voice their environmental concerns.
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Tom Stanley is an artist and recently retired professor of Fine Arts from Winthrop University, but most do not know about his earlier careers. In high school, Stanley thought he would become an engineer like his father and even took a mechanical drawing class. Stanley learned how to use triangles, straight lines, and perfect angles to create detailed blueprints. These skills are carried out through his artwork today. During his artist talk on June 17, Stanley told a story about how he would stay up late into the night working at his drawing table, which he strung with holiday lights so not to wake his family. Another memory that stood out to him was drawing triangles into the lining of a jacket that his brother had given him. READ WHOLE POST [+]
Tom Stanley’s paintings in Scratching the Surface, his solo exhibition at the Halsey Institute, carefully balance easily recognizable forms such as houses and boats with subtle references to art history by utilizing painting techniques that range from sgraffito of the ancient Greeks to drip painting methods found in abstract expressionism. By doing so, he creates contemporary art that is perfectly suited for the revitalized dialogic museum—a space defined by education through conversation and connections. Answers are neither right or wrong, but instead, visitors are encouraged to engage with the space and the art. READ WHOLE POST [+]
Whether it be on board a train, looking out of a car window, or simply walking around, Tom Stanley’s "A Road to Nowhere" series makes one feel as if they are observing passing landscapes on voyage to somewhere (or nowhere). The "A Road to Nowhere" collection includes four triptychs, two currently on display at the Halsey Institute (set A and C). READ WHOLE POST [+]
At first glance, Anthony Dominguez’s work in Exit/Alive appears to be dark and steeped with foreboding images of death and misery. Infused with Native American, Mexican, and tribal styles, Dominguez’s work at a closer glance tells much more of story than death. Many of the living figures in his work are accompanied by death, as represented by the skull figures, and they begin to tell a romantic tale of the interaction of both life and death. A push and pull, the yin and yang; there can be no life without death, and no death without life. This understanding of the work is a direct reflection of Dominguez’s view of life itself. He understood that living in fear of death would never allow one to never fully realize oneself to actuality. This is specifically reflected in the piece Master & Slave; the living figure appears to be giving part of himself to his heart and also allowing death to embrace him simultaneously. READ WHOLE POST [+]
Sara Angelucci's Aviary is a series of photographs that have been digitally manipulated to represent a hybrid form of a human being with birdlike features. While the process was made possible by modern technology, the images are rooted in a historical narrative given the nature of the portraits and status of the birds. The photographs are carte-de-visites or cabinet cards from the mid-1800s to early 1900s. These were a popular way to share your image with friends and family, as the cards could fit into your palm and were made of thick cardstock so to be easily traded or mailed. The birds whose features overlay these portraits are extinct or endangered, leaving them to be a nearly forgotten memory like the cabinet cards. READ WHOLE POST [+]
Through their partnership with the College of Charleston, The Chucktown Squash Scholars program affords students of Charleston’s Title I schools the opportunity to gain mentorship, leadership experience, and critical thinking skills through various activities. As one of those activities, students get the chance to analyze Fahamu Pecou’s DO or DIE: Affect, Ritual, Resistance multimedia art exhibition at the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art. Once a week for five weeks, a group of students is invited to deconstruct a different work each time to get the core of what makes the piece interesting and analyze how it relates to current society. READ WHOLE POST [+]
In his body of work DO or DIE: Affect, Ritual, Resistance, Fahamu Pecou uses artwork–painting, drawing, photography, installation, video, and hip-hop music–as a vehicle to directly comment on the delicate and dangerous experiences that black people in modern America face in their day-to-day lives. In a society where judgment, violence, and hatred towards minority citizens systemically exists, it can be tempting to relate such prejudices through the illustration of bloodshed and cruelty. DO or DIE functions in a different way and serves an altogether different purpose, attempting to avoid the fetishization of black death by instead highlighting themes of pride, hopefulness, and transcendence through the reverence of one’s African ancestry and the acknowledgment of the importance of true, historical roots. By incorporating traditional Yoruba/Ifa spirituality into his artwork through both figures and symbols, Fahamu Pecou offers a body of work that primarily serves “not [as] a story of death, but [as] one of life.” READ WHOLE POST [+]
On September 9, Fahamu Pecou presented InterSessions: The Art X Hip Hop Dialogues™ with guests Killer Mike and Dr. Arturo Lindsay. In case you missed this open conversation on art, hip hop, and racial issues facing the nation, you can view the entire event here. READ WHOLE POST [+]
After the shooting of Walter Scott in North Charleston made headlines in April 2015, Mark Sloan, Director and Chief Curator of the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Arts sent the newspaper cover to Atlanta-based artist Fahamu Pecou with a note: “We’re ready for you.” Walter Scott and the other Black Americans persecuted by the police is not a new phenomenon. To use the artist Fahamu Pecou’s words, the spectacle of Black death that has risen to the surface is a result of multiple forms of disguised terrorism and racism since the birth of the country. Unfortunately, the dialogue over such persecution has still remained hushed. In large part, it is a fear of change and discomfort amongst Americans that presents open discourse, especially within the art world. Pecou is one of several artists who are working to start a dialogue and overcome those fears. READ WHOLE POST [+]
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