Hayden John Phelps

Exhibitions & Art Preparator

Savannah College of Art & Design

Hayden John PhelpsNotable Exhibitions at SCAD Museum of Art

Dakota Jackson The Making of Dakota Jackson

Li Hongbo Irons for the Ages, Flowers for the Day

i feel ya SCAD + André 3000 Benjamin

Rashaad Newsome Orders of Chivalry

Naimar Ramirez Imprint

Natasha Bowdoin Bloom

Vivienne Westwood Dress Up Story — 1990 Until Now

In Passing: American Landscape Photography

Serge Alain Nitegeka Structural-Response II

Nari Ward So-Called

Xu Bing Things Are Not What They First Appear

Oscar De La Renta His Legendary World of Style

The Divine Comedy Heaven, Purgatory and Hell Revisited

by Contemporary African Artists

Li HongboIrons for the Ages, Flowers for the Day

July 30th - January 24th 2015

The SCAD Museum of Art presents “Irons for the Ages, Flowers for the Day,” a large-scale installation by Beijing-based sculptor Li Hongbo. Hongbo primarily uses handmade paper to create visually compel-ling and malleable sculptures that challenge the viewer’s perceptions of metamorphosis in sculpture.

Paper and papermaking have throughout history been quintessential to Chinese culture. The oldest known paper fragments in the world date back to the Han Dynasty (206 B.C.–220 A.D.). Paper slowly made its way to the Western world by way of the Silk Road, a trading network that connected the East and West. Hongbo’s work can be seen as part of this continuum, drawing from a rich formal and historic tradition. The artist’s fascination with paper and its history started coincidentally when he attended the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, as paper was a cheap and readily available resource. This ultimately developed into a focused analysis and engagement with the endless possibilities the medium offers as Hongbo progressed through his studies and es-tablished his career.

This exhibition is curated by Aaron Levi Garvey.

i feel yaSCAD + André 3000 Benjamin

July 18th - September 13th 2015

The SCAD Museum of Art presents “i feel ya: SCAD + André 3000 Ben-jamin.” Making its SCAD Museum of Art debut, the exhibition explores fashion, film and painting through the eyes of three dynamic artists: mul-tihyphenate performer André 3000 Benjamin, filmmaker Greg Brunkalla (B.F.A. video/film) and painter Jimmy O’Neal (B.F.A. illustration).

The exhibition is curated by Laurie Ann Farrell.

Rashaad NewsomeOrders of Chivalry

July 9th - October 4th 2015

SCAD Museum of Art presents a solo exhibition of collage works and films by New York-based artist Rashaad Newsome. “Orders of Chivalry” showcases Newsome’s contemporary take on historic imagery. Through the borrowing and blending of elaborately realized heraldic symbols with iconic hip-hop visuals, Newsome discerns and critiques power structures that have endured for centuries.

Newsome’s treatise on social and economic divisions explores and recreates heraldic meaning through contemporary imagery and concepts. Heraldry’s origins as the practice of recording coats of arms on banners and shields have long been wrought with imagery of one’s status, displaying both familial lineage and military rank-ing. After living and working in Europe, Newsome began to make connections between heraldic elements in various forms of art and architecture. He also recognized correlations between the promi-nent status symbols found in hip-hop culture and those of heraldic motifs and symbols. Newsome’s cross-cultural appropriation of European and American status symbols critiques issues of race, politics and consumer culture.

Central to the exhibition is Newsome’s “Heraldry” film trilogy. Shown as a monumental cube installation, the films invite viewers to move through the gallery as they follow the progression of the image across three screens. This site-specific installation of “King of Arms” was commissioned by SCAD Museum of Art. Throughout these films, Newsome is the protagonist and master of ceremonies, guiding view-ers through the rites and rituals involved with becoming the king of arms, the highest-ranking knight.

This exhibition is curated by Aaron Levi Garvey.

Natasha BowdoinBloom

July 9th - September 25th 2015

SCAD Museum of Art presents “Bloom,” a solo exhibition by Nata-sha Bowdoin, featuring a site-specific sculptural installation along with recent two-dimensional works.

Over the last two years, Bowdoin has worked intensely to create “Gar-den Plot,” which debuts at the SCAD Museum of Art in her first Southeastern solo museum exhibition. The natural world and botanic illustrations play equally important roles in the conceptualizing of the work, most notably Ernst Haeckel’s prints of sea life and lunar maps. Drawing from these sources, along with Emerson’s “Nature” essay and Henry David Thoreau’s “Walden,” Bowdoin’s installation seeks to create a new rhythmic storyline. Using an assortment of mixed media — cut paper, graphite, gouache and wall painting — this installation trans-forms the aforementioned texts into visual patterned abstractions. These abstracted pieces show glimpses of language and text that analyze the ebb and flow of nature and our interaction within it.

This exhibition is curated by Aaron Levi Garvey.

Vivienne Westwood Dress Up Story - 1990 Until Now

May 19th - September 13th 2015

SCAD Museum of Art presents “Dress Up Story — 1990 Until Now,” an exhibition of iconic designs from the oeuvre of the doyenne of fashion, Dame Vivienne Westwood, curated by André Leon Talley. Westwood is the recipient of the 2015 André Leon Talley Lifetime Achievement Award. Both the award and the exhibition are presented in conjunction with the annual SCAD Fashion Show.

Spanning from Westwood’s groundbreaking “Cut, Slash and Pull” collection through her current “Dress Up Story,” the exhibition highlights more than 25 designs Westwood realized in collabora-tion with her creative partner and husband, Andreas Kronthaler.

The exhibition design takes inspiration from an eccentric English party: “A postmodern romp of a weekend party where the swells meet the activists, where the rogues go vogue, and the vogues go rogue,” Talley said. Selections from SCAD Museum of Art’s Earle W. Newton collection of British and American paintings hung salon-style create a backdrop for the revolutionary flair of West-wood’s designs. Westwood added, “Our costumes are romantic and theatrical, inspired by history. We know the characters they belong to. Whoever chooses to wear them recreates the clothes in her own image, making them classics. She inhabits a parallel world — like this one but more ideal. Andreas and I have been designing for 25 years, living and working together. It’s our story. We always dress up.”

This exhibition is curated by André Leon Talley.

Serge Alain Nitegeka Structural - Response II

February 17th - July 19th 2015

The SCAD Museum of Art presents “Structural-Response II,” a monu-mental installation of new sculpture and painting by Serge Alain Nitegeka created specifically for the museum’s Pamela Elaine Poetter Gallery during deFINE Art 2015.

Conceived as a performance sculpture, the work confronts the viewer with a tall, labyrinthine assemblage of black-lacquered wooden beams and invites them to choreograph their own passage through the space. The entanglement and dislocation expressed in Nitegeka’s work ref-erence his personal experiences of escape and migration. Three new large-scale paintings and two recent sculptures from his “Fragile Cargo” series will accompany the site-specific sculptural installation.

This is Nitegeka’s first museum exhibition in the U.S.

This exhibition is curated by Alexandra Sachs.

Nari Ward So Called

February 5th - June 28th 2015

The SCAD Museum of Art presents a solo exhibition of existing and new work by artist Nari Ward. Ward’s practice plays with the ambiguity and symbolism of objects sourced in his immediate surroundings. These ob-jects are often repurposed into elaborate sculptures and two-dimensional works that address social, economic, political and racial issues.

Ward’s work, presented for deFINE ART 2015 in the SCAD Museum of Art’s Walter O. Evans Center for African American Studies, features conceptual pieces that mix and meld found iconic objects with popular idioms and forms. “We the People,” for example, illustrates the opening declaration in the U.S. Constitution with shoelaces alluding to the phrase “to pull yourself up by your bootstraps.” The museum’s west end courtyard showcases a newly commissioned film installation, “Spell-bound,” that engages history, sound and architecture and conveys a sense of longing and belonging.

The centerpiece is a used upright piano with hundreds of metal keys (mostly used and lost) attached to its form, housed within a historic candy shop that was rescued from demolition by a local wood salvage yard. The keys reference aspects of history that have been lost or unacknowledged. They may be keys to places that no longer exist or are no longer in use. A new film made by Ward in Savannah loops con-tinuously on a monitor attached to the backside of the piano. “So-Called” invites viewers to contemplate the presence of stories both told and untold and reconsider how we interpret signs and symbols in and out of context.

This exhibition is curated by Laurie Ann Farrell.

Xu BingThings Are Not What They First Appear

February 17th - July 3rd 2015

The SCAD Museum of Art presents “Things Are Not What They First Appear,” a solo exhibition of work by artist Xu Bing. Considered one of the most important contemporary artists of his generation, Xu Bing is the SCAD deFINE ART 2015 honoree.

Xu Bing is a master of appropriation and interpretation, and his practice often involves working with nontraditional materials in innovative ways to translate texts, study historical images and create monumental instal-lations. “Things Are Not What They First Appear” occupies two spaces within the museum showcasing major works from the artist’s “Back-ground Story” (2004-14) and “Tobacco Project” (1999-2011) series along with “The Character of Characters” (2012) animated video.

Works from the “Background Story” series occupy the SCAD Museum of Art lobby and present Xu Bing’s playful recreation of delicate brush-strokes through the repurposing of plastic, refuse and found materials.

In the “Tobacco Project” series, tobacco is both subject and medium. Xu Bing began an exploration of tobacco during an artist residency in the southeastern U.S. His research and works engage with the physical and olfactory properties of tobacco and provide a critique of the multina-tional tobacco markets, labor issues and cultural implications.

The exhibition culminates with the animated film “The Character of Char-acters.” The film presents an illustrated look into the history of the Chinese characters and playfully engages with current Chinese social issues.

This exhibition is curated by Laurie Ann Farrell.

Oscar De La Renta His Legendary World of Style

February 5th - May 3rd 2015

The SCAD Museum of Art presents “Oscar de la Renta: His Legend-ary World of Style,” the first posthumous tribute to the world-renowned and beloved fashion icon and his work.

This momentous exhibition features 70 garments, many designed exclusively for de la Renta’s closest friends and family. Known as “the sultan of chic,” de la Renta dressed such Hollywood A-listers as Oprah Winfrey, Nicole Kidman and Taylor Swift, as well as former first ladies Hillary Rodham Clinton and Laura Bush.

“Oscar de la Renta: His Legendary World of Style” celebrates the illustrious life and designs of the storied couturier whose work set the standard for timeless elegance.

This exhibition is curated by André Leon Talley.