Calhan Hale HOT CONCRETE

July - August 2022

“HOT CONCRETE” is an exhibition of recent paintings by Houston-born and Austin-based artist Calhan Hale examining temporality, meaning-making and place via rendered collages of surfaces, materials, and images. Acknowledging that family stories, cultural myths, and hyperbole inform subconscious expectations for the moments of our lives, Hale responds to the dissonance between these expectations and the reality of our lived experience. In an attempt to find grounding in the tangible, she looks to what is physically surrounding humankind and finds light, shadow, smoldering heat, parking spaces, freeways, and material used for construction. In these works, Hale brings these familiar, shared surfaces – along with photographs sourced from family and her own life – into an unexpected and disjunctive context through collaged composition and trompe-l'œil, calling on the viewer to re-examine elements initially assumed as immediately understood in hopes of seeing what is really there.