Calhan Hale

Lives and works in New York City, NY

Artist statement

If naming something is the first step of dealing with what is not yet known, then I am interested in the inverse. My work explores what becomes possible when familiar things evade expectation and start to live independent from their associations. I de-contextualize elements from my surroundings through painting and play with the line between image and object, familiarity and strangeness in order to disrupt assumptions and make room for something else to emerge. I aim to create situations that prompt questions about the world around us. I think about what it takes to really look at something - especially something you assume you already know. I want to present imagery in a way that undoes knowing. From here we may access that liminal beat that occurs when you realize that what you assumed you knew is not what you thought after all, and the possible responses that can ensue within that space: Surprise, delight, uncertainty, awkwardness, dissonance or reckoning, to name a few.

Artwork