Michael Hall
Song Cycle
Written by Weston Teruya

Each work in Michael Hall’s Song Cycle rewards sustained observation. The assemblages of sculpture and painting have an improvised, responsive feel as elements play off of the wear and history evident on their substrates and other materials gathered from Recology’s Public Recycling and Reuse Area. The resulting details–holes that hold small trinkets, a sliver of mirror reflecting the incongruent textile pattern beneath an Atlas figurine, or the careful rendering of a painted landscape–might draw initial attention. But it is on the subsequent search for more of these details that other layers reveal themselves. Throughout the exhibition, Hall inserts subtle trompe-l’oeil painted flourishes: nail holes, blue tape, a jagged edge on a wood surface. What might appear to be a handwritten post-it note absent mindedly left on a blank wall turns out to be a carved wood replica. Additionally, mirrored surfaces throughout the installation fragment the visual plane, interrupting and augmenting the process of looking. We are continuously being asked to consider our viewership as much as what is being viewed. In a time when digital tools allow for the over proliferation of convincing fake images, there is an urgency to Hall’s call to look critically and parse illusions.

Befitting the titular evocation of music, Hall also punctuates pieces with sound elements that audiences are welcome to activate: a squeaking rubber chicken, a bell, metronome mechanisms. Like the visual textures that open up on close examination, the sonic elements require us to be present in the moment of observation–these are beats that are only revealed in the moment and require our attention.

In his broader practice, Hall often uses materials from his personal collection–family belongings and sentimental objects–and attends to them by rendering them in meticulous photorealistic detail. Here Hall turns that sense of consideration to objects that belonged to others. Even if the stories behind each item remain inscrutable, Hall makes evident the responsibility he feels to care for the materials–not by covering up and polishing their surfaces, but by embracing their unique histories.

Michael Hall is a Bay Area artist and educator whose drawings, paintings, and videos examine personal and mass-produced objects made unique through their idiosyncratic wear and tear. Hall focuses on how these common objects act as markers of time and place while also conjuring personal histories, collective desires and cultural phenomena. Hall is a recipient of both a Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant and a MFA Fellowship at the Headlands Center for the Arts. His exhibitions include Townsend Center for the Humanities, Catharine Clark Gallery, San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery, Patricia Sweetow Gallery, and Southern Exposure. Hall received his BFA from the California College of the Arts and his MFA from Mills College. He has taught at Creative Growth Art Center, Mills College, UC Berkeley, and Pont Aven School of Contemporary Art. Hall is currently an Associate Professor of Painting and Drawing at California State University East Bay.