About the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art from Halsey Institute on Vimeo.

Learn more about the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art.

Video created by Lunch + Recess, Charleston.

Featuring:

Shepard Fairey, former Halsey Institute exhibiting artist

Renee Stout, former Halsey Institute exhibiting artist

Kate Nevin, former Halsey Insitute Advisory Board Member

Ahead of the Wrecking Ball: A film on Ronald Ramsey by David Boatwright from Halsey Institute on Vimeo.

Commissioned for the exhibition “Ahead of the Wrecking Ball: Ronald Ramsey and the Preservation of Charleston,” this film gives viewers an inside perspective on Ramsey and his quest for preservation.

Directed and produced by David Boatwright
Executive producer: Mark Sloan
Original score composed and performed by Bill Carson
Additional video: Justin Nathanson
Editing consultant: Gavin Shelton

Find out more about Ramsey and the exhibition Ahead of the Wrecking Ball: Ronald Ramsey and the Preservation of Charleston.

This video accompanies the exhibition Aggie Zed: Keeper’s Keep.

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

Producer and Director: Justin Nathanson
Executive Producers: Mark Sloan and Karen Ann Myers

This video was produced to accompany the exhibition
Bob Trotman: Business As Usual
On view January 31 – March 8, 2014
Organized by the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art at the College of Charleston School of the Arts

Special thanks to Jane Trotman, David Caldwell, Bart Trotman, Colin J. Johnson, Elizabeth Willingham, Paige Kline, Katie Nocella, Jordan Fowler, Tommy Fox, Caitlin Murphy, Lizz Biswell, Andrew Steever, Emily Rigsby, Tatjana Beylotte, and Maggie David.

Black Boiled Coffee & the Cacophony of Frogs – Evon Streetman – 1998

Director/Producer – John Reynolds
Executive Producer – Mark Sloan
Videographer/Editor – John Reynolds
Music – Gamble Rodgers
Additional Music – Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Edith Piaf, Woody Guthrie
Image Consultant – Janie Liberatos
Special Thanks – Martha Strawn, Jay Phyfer, Isabelle Blakey, Jerry Uelsmann, Maggie Taylor, Penland School, Robin Dreyer, Michelle Van Parys, Valerie Morris, Eric Shanks, Mara Sloan, Virginia Friedman, Tim Fennell, Judge Alex Sanders, Osprey Productions 

The Halsey Institute commissioned a short film on the work of Butch Anthony on the occasion of his exhibition Inside/Out.

The Halsey Institute is pleased to present an exhibition of work by Butch Anthony of Seale, Alabama. The exhibition will consist of new images, assemblages, and installations created specifically for our galleries. As a multi-faceted self-taught artist, Butch Anthony creates works that investigate and appropriate images from the American vernacular. His practice includes painting X-ray like skeletons on top of antique portraits in elaborate, often gilded frames. An avid collector of unique and bizarre objects, he created the Museum of Wonder, a modern-day cabinet of curiosities filled with art, artifacts, and antiques including the world’s largest gallstone and an actual footprint from Sasquatch. Anthony also hosts the Possum Trot Auction, a weekly junk and art auction (featured on television’s American Pickers) on his 80-acre parcel of land that has been in his family for generations. He has also built The Museum of Wonder Drive-Thru, the first drive-through art and antiques gallery, also on his property. In addition to making and selling art, building unique roadside attractions, and collecting found objects to incorporate into his own artwork, Anthony built his own house and several outbuildings which have been featured in the New York Times. 

Produced in conjunction with the exhibition The Carrion Cheer, A Faunistic Tragedy by Böhler & Orendt at the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art, May 18 – July 7, 2018.

The Halsey Institute commissioned a short film on Colin Quashie and the exhibition Linked.

Colin Quashie creates images that comment on contemporary racial stereotypes. Combining historical relics and artifacts with icons from past and present popular culture, Quashie sharply critiques the way people of color are portrayed in modern visual culture. Using his signature caustic wit, he blends images to allow viewers to more fully explore how images of African Americans and Black culture are constructed today.

In his latest series, called Linked, Quashie juxtaposes images of well-known Black figures with other representations of artifacts to comment on stereotypes as they exist today. In Gabriel, Quashie tweaks an image of Louie Armstrong, updating his signature trumpet with a set of slave shackles. Similarly, in Rose Colored, he creates an image of Harriet Tubman donning a pair of rose-colored glasses, referencing the abolitionist’s view of slaveholders, for whom she still held a level of empathy. With these works, Quashie teases out underlying stereotypes, exposing them for all to see more plainly.

Colin Quashie: Linked is an official visual arts event of the City of Charleston’s MOJA Arts Festival 2019, A Celebration of African-American and Caribbean Arts, September 19-October 6, 2019.

The Halsey Institute has commissioned a short film on Coulter Fussell and the exhibition The Raw Materials of Escape.

Coulter Fussell’s early-developed artsview perceives craft and other arts as indistinguishable from one another. Painting, sculpture, and textile work are one solitary entity in her mind. From youth, the combination developed into an unintentional mash-up, resulting in quilts and textile works that defy expectations of the medium. Fussell relies on the no-holds-barred nature of contemporary painting rules to free her compositions from the constraints of pattern. In turn, she simultaneously relies on the strict discipline of traditional craftwork to act as a self-editing tool. 

Fussell learned to sew by watching her mother, Cathy Fussell, who is herself a renowned quiltmaker. She was determined to be an artist, which—in her young mind—meant that she should be a painter. All through her twenties, Fussell’s focus was painting. However, in a series of firsts, this focus shifted when the birth of her first child prompted her to create her first quilt. Fussell found the issues she had attempted to explore through painting were better addressed with fabric. For Fussell, fabric’s limitations in palette and material offered an infinite amount of freedom in their strictures. Fussell’s work, unlike traditional quilts, does not adhere to a predetermined pattern. Instead, her work retains the wholeness of a quilt while utilizing techniques one would expect to find in painting. For instance, foreground and background are established with the purposeful balance of light and dark materials. In this way, Fussell’s work blurs the lines between art and craft, positing that both practices have an element of functionality and non-functionality.

Creature Comforts – Volker Seding – Spring 1999

Curator – Mark Sloan
Video By – John Reynolds
Produced by – The Office of Media & Technology

This video was produced for the exhibition Dan Estabrook: Wunderkammer at the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art at the College of Charleston, May 14 – July 17, 2021. The work of Dan Estabrook oscillates between image and object and back again. Using antiquated forms of photography, such as salt prints and tintypes, Estabrook examines the objecthood of photography and its ability to represent the truth. He often combines multiple tintypes or adds metal to his images, further commenting on photography’s connection to reality. His sculptural works become recreations of his photos, further blurring the line between image and object. Interested in the studio as a site for fabrication, Estabrook’s sleight of hand in creating still life tableaus asks viewers to reconsider why things appear as they seem. Learn more here: https://halsey.cofc.edu/main-exhibitions/wunderkammer/

Director: John Reynolds
Music: Bill Carson
Runtime: 7 minutes

The Halsey Institute commissioned acclaimed videographer John David Reynolds to create a mini-documentary about Erwin Redl for the exhibition Erwin Redl: Rational Exuberance. The video shows examples of additional projects by the Redl as he discusses his process, approach, and the philosophy behind his work. His works combine light and movement over time to produce a unique multi-sensory viewer experience.

The title of this exhibition is a play on the famous phrase “irrational exuberance” used by former Federal Reserve Board chairman Alan Greenspan, in a speech to the American Enterprise Institute during the Dot-com bubble of the 1990s. In this case the title is the program. It refers to the artist’s strict methodologies which employ binary logic as well as tropes of minimalism to exuberant extremes. As demonstrated in his light installations and most recent kinetic works, a very restrained vocabulary due to the scale, repetition, and variations leads to a sense of deep corporeality. The meaning oscillates between the purely abstract and profound sensuality.

Erwin Redl’s ART AS SYSTEM lecture, May 2016

In late 2015, Italian artist Hitnes embarked on a twenty-city road trip throughout America with the goal of retracing the endeavors of John James Audubon in the 19th century. Audubon’s ambitious goal was to document all of the birds in the country, and these well-known drawings made up his book The Birds in America. Captivated by the enormous scope of Audubon’s goal, Hitnes traveled across the country, aiming to cover in three months what Audubon did in as many decades. Hitnes’s journey on one hand allowed him to explore the state of the birds nearly two centuries after Audubon encountered them. But it also became an all-encompassing performance project in which he gathered materials and made sketches, created public murals, and documented his interactions with a wide range of Americans in video.
Hitnes’s exhibition will document his journey, elaborating on what it is that drives a person to dedicate multiple decades of their life to pursuing an obsession like Audubon did. The exhibition will feature a range of work informed by his own expedition, and he will include other objects and ephemera collected on his trek. The exhibition will also be accompanied by a forthcoming feature-length documentary film on Hitnes’s trip, directed by filmmaker Giacomo Agnetti. Hitnes was an artist-in-residence at the Halsey Institute in the Summer of 2017.

For more info, visit: halsey.cofc.edu/main-exhibitions/the-image-hunter-on-the-trail-of-john-james-audubon/

Hunter’s Paradise Found – Kevin Kelly – Spring 1999

Curator – Mark Sloan
Music by – C. McAlister & Geoffrey Oryema
Video Produced by – John Reynolds 

Funding provided by Canada Council & The Halsey Gallery Exhibits Endowment

Jerome Meadows- If Wishes Were Rivers – Fall 2001

Executive Producer – Mark Sloan
Produced by – John Reynolds
Interview – Jonathan Gaynor
Imagery Consultant – Buff Ross
Thumb Guitar – Jerome Meadows

Funding for this project has been provided by The Halsey Exhibitions Endowment, College of Charleston, The Office of Cultural Affairs for the City of Charleston, The Halsey/McCallum Fountation, Pearlstine Family Fund, The Stine Family Fund, and the friends of the Gallery. 

Jennifer Wen Ma: Cry Joy Park—Gardens of Dark and Light is an investigation into the construct of a utopia, inspired by the history of Charleston, South Carolina: a cultural and artistic capital of the American South, and an exemplar of its opulence and beauty. This installation aims to present both an alluring, gorgeous and otherworldly garden, and its darker counterpart. The worlds created by the exhibition are a juxtaposition of utopia and dystopia and are presented via an immersive multisensory experience that utilizes various forms of communication to convey its message.

Jennifer Wen Ma: Cry Joy Park—Gardens of Dark and Light is an investigation into the construct of a utopia, inspired by the history of Charleston, South Carolina: a cultural and artistic capital of the American South, and an exemplar of its opulence and beauty. This installation aims to present both an alluring, gorgeous and otherworldly garden, and its darker counterpart. The worlds created by the exhibition are a juxtaposition of utopia and dystopia and are presented via an immersive multisensory experience that utilizes various forms of communication to convey its message.

Produced and Directed by John Reynolds
Executive Producer: Mark Sloan

The Halsey Institute commissioned acclaimed videographer John David Reynolds to create a mini- documentary about Jiha Moon for the exhibition Jiha Moon: Double Welcome, Most Everyone’s Mad Here. In the video, the artist talks about her creative process and inspirations.

Based in Atlanta, Georgia, Moon harvests cultural elements native to Korea, Japan, and China and then unites them with Western elements to investigate the multi-faceted nature of our current global identity as influenced by popular culture, technology, racial perceptions, and folklore. Featuring over fifty works, Moon blurs the lines between Western and Eastern identified iconography such as the characters from the online game Angry Birds© and smart phone Emojis which float alongside Asian tigers and Indian gods, in compositions that appear both familiar and foreign simultaneously.

Moon’s witty and ironic work explores how Westerners perceive other cultures and how perceived foreigners see the West. Korean born, now living in the United States, Moon asks the pertinent question, “Why do people love foreign stuff so much? When we travel to other countries, explore different cultures, and meet with new people, we tend to fall in love with things that are not our own. People have a soft spot for foreign things. The world is so interconnected nowadays, how can you even tell where someone or something ‘comes from’ anymore?” In her work, Moon acts in the role of a traveler, and explores the notion that identity is not beholden to geographic location.

Honoring traditional Asian arts through her use of Hanji paper, Korean silk, and calligraphic brushstrokes, throughout the exhibition she plays with iconography and symbols that have been classified as “foreign” such as blue willow china patterns, fortune cookies (which originated in California but are identified as Chinese), Korean fans, and floating dragons and intermingles them with references to Pop and southern folk art. Her use of the peach identified in Chinese mythology as a symbol of immortality is also a nod to her home state of Georgia’s mascot, the “Georgia Peach.” Moon transforms a traditional Korean fashion accessory called “Norigae” into endearing quirky manifestations of various personalities, with such names as Gloria and Rachel whose hair is interwoven with eclectic items such as children’s plastic barrettes or Native American beaded dolls. Her misshapen and whimsical ceramics reference southern folk art face jugs yet are painted in traditional Asian ceramic glazes and motifs. At the heart of the exhibition, Moon presents an installation featuring perceived kitschy elements of Asian home décor: low wooden tables and silk embroidered pillows placed on Japanese tatami mats. Displayed on the various surfaces are her unconventional ceramic works reflecting her interest in the “beautiful awkward” in which she makes reference to a tourist’s desire to collect foreign and exotic elements to beautify their houses back home.

At first glance, Jiha Moon’s work appears as a mash-up of high-and-low brow cultural references. Upon further inspection, slyly ironic and humorous references emerge that are satirically filtered by the artist, who reminds us that our preconceived notion of “others” is not a true manifestation of actual identity.

This video accompanies the exhibition Jumaadi: forgive me not to miss you not.

Produced and Directed by John Reynolds
Original Score: Christopher Cerrone
Performed by: Ian David Rosenbaum
Executive Producer: Mark Sloan

Jumaadi is an Indonesian artist, currently dividing his time between Australia and the Netherlands. He works in multiple media with equal fluency – painting, drawing, sculpture, installations, and shadow puppets. He will also be working on a special project with the students of the Academic Magnet High School here in Charleston to create an evening of shadow- puppet theater to be presented at their school. His residency and exhibition are supported in part by the Quattlebaum Endowement and the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation.

This video accompanies the exhibition Herb Parker: Studio Practice and Joseph Burwell: School of the Viking Spaniard Re-visited

Produced and Directed by Dave Stewart Brown
Original Score: Bill Carson
Executive Producers: Mark Sloan and Karen Ann Myers

Special thanks to Leilani DeMuth, Celia Gibson and Michael Moran, Jennifer Henriques Phillips, Donald Sparks and Katherine Saenger.

Leslie Wayne: Recent Work

Produced and Directed by –  John Reynolds
NYC Producer – Monica Brady
Executive Producer – Mark Sloan
Timelapse – Leslie Wayne and Don Porcaro

Funding provided by grants from:
The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts
The Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelly Foundation

Labyrinth – Motoi Yamamoto – 2006

Photography by – John Reynolds

Labyrinth – Motoi Yamamoto – 2006

Photography by – John Reynolds