Via a direct approach to mark making and a refined choice of materials, Hall’s recent paintings celebrate line, colour and surface, and in doing so question our tactile relationship to the painted image. Visual tensions between chaos/order, organic/geometric, sumptuousness/raw, sight/touch, colour/black & white are exploited by the artist to generate arresting works rich in sensuality and emotional impact.
We can approach these paintings as energetic visions of a territory imbued with the chaos of natural forces. The immediacy of the artists trace creates a graphic field that suggests growth, vegetation, movement, and a palpable relation to gravity. Ambiguity between abstraction and figuration is central to the impact and mystery of the paintings.
Working directly on the studio wall, Hall has developed a technique where he blurs and flattens his marks to suggest a mechanical or printed process – a visual effect that is in blatant contradiction to the immediacy of the works making. Walking a fine line between abstract expressionism and the economy of Chinese ink painting, the energy of these gestural fields is held in balance by their interaction with a monochromatic block of suédine – a textured, luxury fabric that the artist has sourced individually to complete each work.
The texture of the suédine fabric records random marks and the aleatory passage of fingers and hands. Gestural dialogues are created between those fixed by the artist and those who may pass by – both present, past and future. An artistic homage to Paul Valery who insisted that a poem is “never finished, only abandoned.”
Melissa Sanchez
