Chase Hall: Half Note and February James: We Laugh Loud So The Spirits Can Hear

Front cover: Chase Hall, Eric Dolphy, 2020 Back cover: February James, Tethered To You #5, 2020

Chase Hall Half Note

February James We Laugh Loud So The Spirits Can Hear

July 11 - August 22, 2020

Essay by Essence Harden Edited by Staci Boris Photographed by Robert Chase Heishman

This catalogue was published on the occasion of the first respective solo exhibitions by artists Chase Hall and Februrary James at Monique Meloche Gallery

Š2020

Introduction

moniquemeloche gallery is thrilled to announce tandem solo presentation of new works from artists Chase Hall and February James. Faced with navigating the new challenges introduced by the global pandemic, both Hall and James were offered a new entry point for intimate self-reflection, memorialized in these new bodies of work.

With his vigorous portraits, Chase Hall (b. 1993, lives and works in New York and Los Angeles) aims to explore the absolute of biracial identity, redefining the duality of a mixed-race experience in terms that are both personal and cultural. A self-taught multi-disciplinary artist, Hall considers the internal dialogue of existing in between fixed identities, Black and white, reclaiming past histories and residual traumas in order to consider how the dynamics of race are foundational to America.

Through his new series Half Note, Hall considers the longstanding erasure of Black achievement and the resilient lineage of Black Americans examined through jazz culture. The landscapes are evocative of sultry jazz clubs, a site through which Black identity, community, humanity, and expression flourished despite oppressions imposed upon them. Each painting is deliberate; raw cotton canvas remains exposed, a form of protest against white paint as a necessary ingredient

to

activate

surfaces.

Instead,

Hall

allows

robust

strokes

of

color

to

con-

front the vacuous nature of historically white spaces, rendering the scenes almost incomplete, conceptually and visually considering the conflict of biraciality. The use of coffee creates vivid hues evocative of black nuance, as tonal washes liberate each figure from the regulated and exclusionary canon of American portraiture. Hall engages history as vehicle to better understand the painful inheritances of the past, while reclaiming his legacy and creating space for increased cultural cognizance and reparation.

February James (lives and works in Los Angeles) is a self-taught artist whose work is rooted deeply in autobiographical narrative, exploring the factors that influence identity formation and the human condition to expose the hidden emotions that exist between what we see and what we experience. Compelled by what she describes as the broken places, James meditates less on the physicality of her figures, instead aiming to capture their true psychological essence.

Devoid

of

formal

construct,

each

smeared,

distorted,

and

seemingly

hollow

portrait

is

equipped with a confronting gaze that brings viewers to the nexus between the authentic self and the conflicted self. We Laugh Loud So The Spirits Can Hear represents an intuitive shift through which James developed soft portraits, evocative of family members and familiar figures whose memory offers a sense of sanctuary and comfort. Segmented lines serve as linguistic tools that offer space for a deeper exploration of fragmentation within the human psyche, while a daring color palette of deep maroons conjures the sensation of life, blood pulsing through the veins. Each portrait feels like a memory charged with the oral histories and lessons their subjects passed along, while considering how truth is conditioned by the frameworks through

which

it

is

received.

More

specifically

how

our

family

legacies

influence

our everyday life, vulnerabilities, expectations, and experiences, and how we can achieve a sense of harmony with these inherited pathologies.

While varied in their methodologies, each artist’s propensity for exploring the figure enriches the

recent

dialogues

around

identity,

family

history,

and

the

human

condition.

It is through this deeper understanding of the inheritances of our past and their resonance that we arrive at new insights and avenues of reflection.

Installation views Chase Hall: Half Note (this page); February James: We Laugh Loud So The Spirits Can Hear (opposite page)

Essay

Essay by Essence Harden July 2020

This essay begins and ends with a rumination on fugitivity, on the notion that Blackness and Black life are a state of refusal, a negation of “standards imposed from elsewhere,” ingeniously and dexterously marking a future in a world that suggests that impossibility.1 Fugitivity is both a desire for escape of external impositions and acts that affirm (via image, performance, sound, movement, sentiment)

the everyday realities of Black life. Neither the exception to anti-Black imaginings

of Black people nor the pathology relegated to Blackness, the fugitive expression is one that affirms Black subjectivity for itself.

2020 has highlighted the global pandemic of anti-Blackness via a virus and extrajudicial killings wherein Black people’s deaths are exhibited as somehow inevitable and spectacle.

In

this

deluge

there

are

and

their

the

there

is

fugitive

futurity

as

also visions

protest, in

sacred,

there

which whole,

is

Black and

outrage,

and

perhaps

people

hold

themselves,

freestanding.

most

February

importantly,

their

histories,

James’s

and

Chase Hall’s solo exhibitions, We Laugh Loud So The Spirits Can Hear and Half Note, respectively, are two beautiful and dynamic moments that call towards that state of escape.

Interior scenes and sonic waves, vibrant hues and saturated fibers, affective space and diasporic routes are mapped in portraits of acrylic, watercolor, and oil.

James’s works are primarily singular portraits that weep and waver. The subjects’ eyes with weary lids overwhelmingly direct their attention towards the viewer. Burgundy, plum, and crimson oil find their ways in the faces of those in the Tethered series (#1- #6), illuminating the

flow of blood that circulates just beneath the surface. Their faces are warmed,

close, and intimate in gestures offering a vision of a proximity and kinship in excess of what is possible today. James’s watercolors bend and mold the figurative works on paper, shaping pools and puddles, streaks and streams for the subjects that follow.

1 https://www.newyorker.com/culture/persons-of-interest/fred-motens-radical-critique-of-the-present

Hall’s work is a procession of ensembles. Duos, trios, and individual subjects are framed with

string,

percussive,

and

woodwind

instruments.

Though

static,

these

works

convey

a sway and movement in the permeation and strokes of acrylic. Hall’s subjects, with lips that curl upwards in their corners, are enshrined within their own actions and states of making.

In

O’Hare,

tenderness

the in

tenderness

Like

the

back

Hall of

paints my

between

hand,

a

an

older

detailed

vision

couple of

is

clasping

the

same

hands

two

moments that hold the textures of Black life and intimate proximity.

Together James and Hall work towards what Fred Moten names “a desire for the outside, for a playing or being outside, an outlaw edge proper to the now always already improper voice or instrument.”1

This want for existence on the outside is a hallmark of fugitivity; it is a position

that affirms a move towards liberation and autonomous subjectivity in the face of a status that should/could/would mark you otherwise. It is not lost to me that this moment presents an of

anxiety

around

quarantining.

something that

we

And

historically exist.2

exteriority yet,

this

rooted

James

and

as

we

reality and Hall

are

for

a both

faced

with

a

seemingly

Black

people,

this

profound

position

in

the

means

to

imagine

offer

a

desire

for

endless the

“afterlife that

cycle

outside, of

is

slavery”

outside-ness

in familial portraits and visions of Black gatherings. They are in excess of prescription shutting improvisational strokes, figures, and movement within their works. These figures do not shy away from the gravity that is part and parcel of Black life—figures and the frame itself are often pulled within the canvas as there is surely a weight present—but they do serve as a container in which life thrives and shifts. We Laugh Loud So The Spirits Can Hear and Half Note are projects of the fugitive, and life here, in the realm of the outside, thrives.

1

Moten, Fred. 2018. Stolen Life. Consent Not to Be a Single Being, [v. 2]. Durham: Duke University Press.

2

Hartman, Saidiya V. 2007. Lose Your Mother : A Journey along the Atlantic Slave Route. 1st ed. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Chase Hall Installation views

Chase Hall Artworks

Beneath the Underdog, 2020 Acrylic and coffee on cotton canvas 48 x 36 in. (121.9 x 91.4 cm)

Lucy in the Crowd, 2020 acrylic and coffee on cotton canvas 48 x 36 in. (121.9 x 91.4 cm)

Eric Dolphy, 2020 acrylic and coffee on cotton canvas 20 x 16 in. (50.8 x 40.6 cm)

In Red Playing Blues, 2020 acrylic and coffee on cotton canvas 40 x 40 in. (101.6 x 101.6 cm)

The Open Door, September 13th 1953, 2020 acrylic and coffee on cotton canvas 48 x 36 in. (121.9 x 91.4 cm)

Like The Back of My Hand, 2020 acrylic and coffee on cotton canvas 10 x 10 in. (25.4 x 25.4 cm)

O’Hare, 2020 acrylic and coffee on cotton canvas 18 x 24 in. (45.7 x 61 cm)

Hats Off, 2020 acrylic and coffee on cotton canvas 12 x 12 in. (30.5 x 30.5 cm)

February James Installation views

February James Artworks

It Takes More Than One Tool To Build A House, 2020 watercolor and ink on paper 30 x 22 in. (76.2 x 55.9 cm)

Kick ‘Em In The Face, Taste The Body, 2020 watercolor and ink on paper 30 x 22 in. (76.2 x 55.9 cm)

Do You Want To Sit At My Table, 2020 Watercolor and ink on paper 30 x 22 in. (76.2 x 55.9 cm)

Pray That What You Lack Does Not Distract, 2020 watercolor and ink on paper 30 x 22 in. (76.2 x 55.9 cm)

A Room With A View, 2020 watercolor and ink on paper 30 x 22 in. (76.2 x 55.9 cm)

Cluttered Contradictions, 2020 watercolor and ink on paper 30 x 22 in. (76.2 x 55.9 cm)

Tethered To You #4, 2020 oil on linen 10 x 8 in. (25.4 x 20.3 cm)

Tethered To You #6, 2020 oil on linen 10 x 8 in. (25.4 x 20.3 cm)

Tethered To You #2, 2020 oil on linen 10 x 8 in. (25.4 x 20.3 cm)

Tethered To You #5, 2020 oil on linen 10 x 8 in. (25.4 x 20.3 cm)

Tethered To You #1, 2020 oil on linen 10 x 8 in. (25.4 x 20.3 cm)

Tethered To You #3, 2020 oil on linen 10 x 8 in. (25.4 x 20.3 cm)

Biographies

Chase Hall (b. 1993, St Paul, Minnesota, lives and works in New York and Los Angeles) was raised across Minnesota, Chicago, Las Vegas, Colorado, Dubai, Los Angeles and New York. Hall has been included in exhibitions at ICALA in Los Angeles, Kuntsthalle Basel in Switzerland, Public Art Fund in New York, Museo Tamayo in Mexico, CLEARING in New York, Various Small Fires in Los Angeles and South Korea, The Mass in Tokyo, Monique Meloche in Chicago and Museo Nacional de San Carlos in Mexico, among others. Hall has been artist in residence at The Skowhegan school of Painting and Sculpture in Maine, The Atlantic Center for The Arts under Catherine Opie in Florida, The Mountain School of Arts in Los Angeles, the Macedonia Institute in Hudson Valley and The Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin. His artwork has

been

featured

in

Architectural

Digest,

Vogue,

ID,

Dazed,

Forbes,

Art

Papers,

The Atlantic, Garage, The New York Times and T Magazine.

February James (lives and works in Los Angeles) is an auto didactic artist from Washington, D.C. She works primarily in oil pastels with a penchant for watercolor and graphite powder. Recent exhibitions include Luce Gallery, Turin, Italy (2020); Jeffrey Deitch, Los Angeles, CA (2019); LatchKey Gallery, New York, NY (2019); Wilding Cran Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (2019); Band of Vices, Los Angeles, CA (2018); Gregorio Escalante Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (2017); and Papillion Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (2015). Her work has appeared in various television broadcasts and print

publicationsand

has

across the U.S. and abroad.

been

acquired

by

institutions

and

private

collections

Essence Harden is a Ph.D. Candidate, independent curator, and arts writer. Essence has curated exhibitions at Charlie James Gallery, California African American Museum (CAAM), Antenna Gallery (New Orleans), Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE), Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD), The Advocate and Gochis Galleries, Residency Art Gallery (Inglewood), Human Resources, Oakland Museum of California (2020), and UTA Arts (2020). Essence is a contributor to Contemporary Art Review LA (CARLA), Artsy, LALA, Cultured Magazine, Performa Magazine, and SFAQ: International Arts and Culture amongst other publications and has written catalog entries for Prospect 5: Yesterday we said tomorrow, Brave New Worlds: Exploration of Space: Palm Springs Art Museum, and What Needs to Be Said: Hallie

Ford

Fellows

Exhibition.

Essence

is

a

recipient

of

The

2018

Creative

Capital,

Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Program Grant. Essence graduated Magna Cum Laude with a Bachelor of Arts in History and received their Master of Arts from the Department of African American Studies at UC Berkeley. Essence is currently a Ph.D. Candidate in African Diaspora Studies at UC Berkeley. Essence resides in Los Angeles, CA.

Monique Meloche Gallery is located at 451 N Paulina Street, Chicago, IL 60622 For additional info, visit moniquemeloche.com or email info@moniquemeloche.com

A portion of the proceeds from both exhibitions will be donated to the following local Chicago community-based organizations: On behalf of Chase Hall and the gallery, Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestra which invests in the future of music and the next generation of leaders by providing educational programming to their students.

On behalf of February James and the gallery, Free Lunch Academy (FLA), a non-profit organization currently working in Chicago Public Schools.