Dylan Gauthier: highwatermarks

Dylan Gauthier: highwatermarks, the first US solo museum project by the Brooklyn-based artist Dylan Gauthier (b. 1979, Los Angeles), centers on an immersive video and audio installation that was planned, filmed, and edited during the artist’s year-long residency at the Brandywine River Museum of Art which focused on key aspects of the Brandywine Conservancy’s activities.

With highwatermarks (2017), the artist transforms the Museum’s third floor gallery into a 4-channel, 4K video installation that narrates the path of a single drop of water down the course of the Brandywine and documents the local communities through which it flows. An accompanying multi-channel original sound composition blends readings of foundational environmental texts, local legend and history, and reflections on the region by Brandywine Conservancy staff. In an adjoining room, a selection of artist-filmed 360° “moments” – short films shot with 360° video cameras that provide an immersive encounter with selected sites in the region – are presented in a series of wearable headsets.

Shot on location in the Brandywine Watershed and surrounding region, the project traces the river’s headwaters among the farms of the Honey Brook Township, through industrial towns like Coatesville and the rolling hills of Chadds Ford, to the public water supply to the city of Wilmington, DE. highwatermarks presents the river and its people through four seasons, blending views from the Brandywine landscape with on-water shots filmed from a small boat constructed by the artist earlier in his residency.

Combining video, sculpture, performance and digital media, Gauthier examines representations of nature and the environment alongside with society’s relationship to policy, literature, and care.