Alexander Hall, 2016 (Savannah, GA)

I paint iconic items like the 1957 Coke bottle or the 1952 Volkswagen Beetle, which are integral to my personal narrative. These items are emblematic of the 1950’s, an era of great productivity that reached a peak in the 1970’s when I was born. They served as the backdrop of my childhood in South Korea. I believe that looking at the light passing through an emerald tinted Coke bottle as if the vessel was a sacred stained glass. I believe that beauty is in the mind to read, not the eye to see.

In my paintings I use a visible grid as a generative matrix to make representational work out of iconic items: Coke bottles and caps, the Volkswagen Beetle, and the toy soldier, all cultural icons of mass production. The products visualize, materialize, and re-contextualized desire and belief. These icons are placed into the grid as a window to carry messages through particularly philosophic importance in an age of consumer goods and excess, loosely involving scientific logic and embracing mythical belief.

To create the paintings, I include such materials as acrylic ink, synthetic dyes, blueberries and mud to paint. Rather than using traditional painting pigments, these alternative materials produce a challenge to discover something unconscious that serves a higher purpose in my work. For example, “Blueberry Soldier,” is made with pigment from blueberries and the VW piece is made with mud, creating images that are both elusive and solid. This choice of materials incites questions from viewers, rather than making a declarative statement.

The choice of cultural icons is a fantasy of desire and belief system that I grew up with in the culture of the 1970’s. The specific icons chosen and application of a grid create presence and absence of retrospective images simultaneously. I am now living the dream I used to hold, and this work reflects that, as the images have an undeniable weight.