Catharine Clark Gallery announces the opening of "Michael Hall: For Real Life" and "Imin Yeh: A Salty Rainbow," on view from May 11 through July 3, 2024. Hall and Yeh create extraordinarily crafted works about parenthood, memory, and the deeply felt process of art-making. These are the debut solo gallery exhibitions for both artists following Hall's acclaimed "curbside" exhibition, "Belongings," at the gallery in 2020 and Yeh's solo presentation with EXiT at CODEX 2024. In conjunction with these gallery exhibitions, the gallery presents Lenka Clayton’s sound installation Mothers’ Days Chorus (2020) in the Media Room. The gallery will host an opening reception on Saturday, May 11, 2024, from 1-3 PM (remarks at 2 PM).
Michael Hall’s paintings, drawings, and sculptures reflect close observation, everyday poetics, and connections formed through the exchange of information. He describes his work as a form of record-keeping, documenting, and re-imagining books, record albums, films, and ephemera that hold emotional weight or significance for him. Hall notes that he is always thinking about the tension between permanence and impermanence and how cultural objects—from paint on a surface to words on a page; from sound waves etched into vinyl to data encoded in silica—are intended to last beyond the materials on which they are printed, rendered, or recorded.
"For Real Life" features a selection of graphite drawings that reflect on the life of an object, rendered at a 1:1 scale. The drawings emerged from a meditative process in which Hall examined his immediate surroundings, focusing on moments that moved him: fallen leaves gathered from a yard, well-loved CDs, burnt matches, and the head of a guitar broken by a child. From these drawings, Hall created a new series of paintings and mixed media works that incorporate sculpture in ways that bring the composition off the canvas. The painting Let Love In (2023) references the title of the 1994 Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds album made popular by the track "Red Right Hand." On this album, Cave, three years into fatherhood and newly married, recorded songs that were strikingly personal and inward, a contrast to his brooding punk balladeer persona. Hall writes, "I began the painting thinking about love and the complexity of it, especially in the cis-gendered, old boys' club that Cave came up in and that I was similarly surrounded by as a Marine Corps son, living on U.S. Marine bases around the world."
In developing this painting, Hall began to think about how to "let love in" to the composition. He painted Cave’s album cover, which depicts a shirtless Cave against a dreamy red and pink backdrop. He gazes up, possibly in wonder or contemplation, looking at once both strong and vulnerable. Hall removed the text that, on the original album cover, is emblazoned across his chest. Other texts on love are layered throughout the canvas, such as a volume of Robert Creeley’s poems, and a compact disc of Exuma’s Happiness and Sunshine. Objects are "held" in place by painted blue and masking tape. Painted matches are scattered throughout the canvas, suggesting a spark being ignited again and again. A hand-built shelf extends from the base of the painting, holding a stack of physical books, including bell hooks's all about love; a vintage brass deer perches on top of these books, staring up at Cave staring up. A hand-painted QR code, when scanned, links to a short video of a match being lit, an "easter egg" that brings the painting again off the canvas.
Hall writes that this new work "embraces chance and happenstance. As a parent, I always think about my ongoing collaboration with our child as they develop their understanding of the world around them. It is informed by our child’s exuberant observations, uninhibited mark-making, and eye-opening imagination. My work similarly channels this amassment of information as a joyous process of careful observation and inviting wonder."
– Michael Hall
