Chase Hall's multidisciplinary practice seeks to explore the hybridity of the Black experience based on his own upbringing, navigating his identity as a biracial individual in America.
Read MoreWhilst Hall works across sculpture, photography, and video, he is best known for his energetic figurative paintings rendered in acrylic and coffee pigment on cotton canvas. Foregrounding acts of labour or images of community, Hall's paintings are filled with individuals such as jazz musicians or farmers going about their daily lives.
His use of cotton canvas and coffee beans is integral to his conceptual treatment of Blackness in his practice. Both agrarian materials, cotton and coffee are notable for their role in perpetuating modern racial trauma, while the tonal contrast between the two materials alludes to the hybridity of race.
In March 2022, Hall received his European debut exhibition at the Zurich and New York-based Galerie Eva Presenhuber—a month after the gallery announced their representation of the artist.
Hall's use of coffee as a pigment is one of the most unique aspects of his practice and featured heavily in the exhibition, titled Clouds in My Coffee. Producing almost alchemical results, Hall uses varying levels of coarseness and fineness in the grounds of the bean to achieve a broad spectrum of browns in his backgrounds.
Made by first pouring and then painting the coffee over the white cotton canvas in dappled brushstrokes, Hall's paintings—including Early Bird (2021), Jarvis and the Goldfish (2021), and Spelling Bee (Eureka) (2022)—celebrate the beauty of tonal differences and the hybrid nature of race across society today.
Introducing Hall's practice for his European debut, Ocula Advisory remarked, 'Hall gracefully depicts individuals and groups going about their daily lives, foregrounding acts of labour in some instances, whilst in others exploring images of community or leisure.'
