As a part of their 30th Anniversary celebration, the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art at the College of Charleston School of the Arts will host an exhibition pairing the new works of Shepard Fairey with a survey of prints by Jasper Johns. The exhibition, entitled "The Insistent Image: Recurrent Motifs in the Art of Shepard Fairey and Jasper Johns," opens on May 22 and will be Fairey's first major exhibition in his hometown of Charleston, South Carolina.
Fairey and Johns' works were chosen to be shown together because they both "recycle graphic elements in the works they produce and in each case these repeated fragments gain new meaning through fresh juxtapositions and associations." They were also chosen because of their connection to the Institute and the state (Johns was born in Georgia but raised in South Carolina), and because their art turns the otherwise mundane into the "iconic." Alongside Johns' prints produced between 1982 and 2012 at Universal Limited Art Editions, Fairey will present prints, paintings, works on paper, and he will paint large-scale murals around the city. Filmmaker Brett Novak will document the artist's involvement in the project as well as his mural painting, and the resulting film will be screened during the exhibition.
Halsey Institute director and exhibition curator, Mark Sloan says that they wanted to "highlight the accomplishments of two native sons as a way to demonstrate the fact that important contemporary art can originate anywhere." For a full list of related events (lectures, walk-throughs, etc.) and for more information about the exhibition, visit the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art site.
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