The Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art at the College of Charleston School of the Arts has organized a major traveling exhibition of new work by contemporary Japanese artist Motoi Yamamoto. The exhibition is a featured presentation of Spoleto Festival USA will be free and open to the public from May 25 until July 7, 2012. Watch a timelapse video of the installation.
Entitled Return to the Sea: Saltworks by Motoi Yamamoto, the centerpiece of the exhibition will be a site-specific installation created entirely out of salt by the artist during his two-week residency at the Halsey Institute. Return to the Sea: Saltworks by Motoi Yamamoto will travel nationally after its inaugural presentation at the Halsey Institute, including stops in Charlotte, N.C., Los Angeles, and Monterey, Calif.
CBS News journalist Martha Teichner will interview Yamamoto 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 Simon’s Center for the Arts, 54 St. Philip Street, at 5 p.m. on Saturday, May 26. 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. The public can visit the Halsey Institute on Saturday, July 7 from 11 a.m. and 4 p.m. and gather a small amount of salt. Then, as a group, the salt will be returned to the sea (hence the name of the exhibit) at the Aquarium Wharf on Concord Street.
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 170-page color catalogue documenting twelve years of the artist’s saltworks around the world. The catalogue includes essays by Sloan and Mark Kurlansky, author of the New York Times best seller, Salt: A World History. The video, produced by Sloan and Emmy award-winning videographer John Reynolds, 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.
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. This project has received support from the Asian Cultural Council, the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation, Japan Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Yamamoto and the Halsey Institute collaborated with the Clemson Architecture Center in Charleston’s (CAC.C) Studio V Design and Build class to build two viewing platforms for the installation. The students also built 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.
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.
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 matchesYamamoto 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. Yamamoto 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.
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 Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art is a non-collecting contemporary art museum located on the campus of the College of Charleston, on the corner of Calhoun and St. Philip Streets. HICA offers a comprehensive contemporary arts program that is committed to providing a direct experience with art works in various media, in an environment that fosters creativity, innovation, and learning. The Halsey Institute serves as an extension of the undergraduate curricula at the College of Charleston and as a cultural resource for the region by producing exhibitions, lectures and panel discussions, film series, publications, and a comprehensive website. In addition, the Halsey Institute seeks to foster meaningful partnerships with local organizations in order to further the reach of contemporary art within the Charleston community. Admission into the galleries and to most programs is free with the public encouraged to attend.
