ALISON HALL at TOTAH

Alison Hall: unannounced at TOTAH on Stanton Street through December 17

Alison Hall, Ancestral, 2017, oil, graphite, plaster on panel, 91 x 71 inches

Alison Hall makes paintings on panels coated with Venetian plaster, some painted black and some painted a deep ultramarine. These supple black or blue fields become the "arenas" for an intricate dance of graphite mark-making on a grid of tiny dots. The silvery graphite floats like a mirage on top of the dark matte fields, then disappears as the viewer's position changes. The marks follow a systematic program, but the system is often interrupted by glitches or directional changes. Particularly in the two large paintings here, the combined effect of the field and the marks assumes an intuitive organic quality, like dark flowing water, or constantly shifting winds. In many of the smaller works, the dot matrix forms a continuous grid against a blue or black field, evoking a schematic night sky, or Giotto's luscious Arena Chapel ceiling - embodiments of the infinite or the sacred. There is an immediate sense of necessity embedded in these works, and in the arduous nature of Hall's process - a deep connection to cultural history, to the emotional resonance of tradition, and to the inherent humanity in the ancient practice of making. 

Alison Hall, Ancestral, 2017, detail

Alison Hall, Maiden, 2017, oil, graphite, plaster on panel, 91 x 71 inches

Alison Hall, Shroud X, 2017, oil, graphite, plaster on panel, 9.5 x 7.5 inches

Alison Hall, Sacristy, 2017, oil, graphite, plaster on panel, 13 x 11 inches

Alison Hall, Soffito I, 2017, oil, graphite, plaster on panel, 13 x 11 inches

Alison Hall: unannounced, Totah Gallery, NYC 

Images courtesy of TOTAH

ALISON HALL at Steven Harvey

Alison Hall, Brooklyn Nocturne XII, Ghazal, 2015, 9 1/2 x 7 1/2 in., oil, graphite, and venetian plaster on panel

In her first solo show in New York, Alison Hall is presenting a group of exquisite small paintings at Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects (through July 31, 2015). The exhibition, aptly titled East of Blue, reveals Hall's deep connection to the history of painting -- the materials, processes, systems, and iconography, as well as the ritualized labor of traditional practice. While it might not be obvious to the viewer that each small panel is painstakingly built of many layers of sanded Venetian plaster, what is obvious is the utter sensuality of the resulting surface, and the delicacy and depth of the oil color ground. On top of, or into that ground, Hall uses graphite hash marks and lines to create intricate rhythmic patterns that are at once translucent, physical, and constantly shifting with the viewer's position. Within the obsessive system of each piece always occurs some beautifully unexpected irregularity that nudges the work to take a breath. 

Visually, this work has obvious relations to 13th century Italian frescos, and of course equally, to contemporary geometric abstraction. But it is in the expansive realm of metaphor that the visuality is operating here. Hall is tapping into the ultimate potency of the poetic object. Much more ancient than Giotto, it is a primal impulse that creates visual embodiments of our most fundamental perceptions - inexplicably transforming the ordinariness of the world into magic.

Alison Hall, Sally, 2015, 13 3/4 x 11in., oil, graphite, and venetian plaster on panel

Alison Hall, Relics, 2015, 27 1/2 x 22 in., oil, graphite, and venetian plaster on panel

Alison Hall, Brooklyn Nocturne XIV, My Three Eyes, 2015, 9 1/2 x 7 1/2 in., oil, graphite, and venetian plaster 

on panel

All images courtesy of Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects