Hanging Day 
Entropics | About
Mike Hall’s work stands as a meticulous exploration of urban and rural environments. The exhibition introduces a linear progression of the evolution of his studies, an intricate examination of the landscape, which the artist shares an intimate bond with. Starting with representational imagery, mediums ranging from pencil to inks and watercolours, the artist approaches and then deconstructs the landscape, concluding into obscured, more intimate interpretations created with oils.
Hall’s work is deeply entangled with the concept of entropy, the endless spiral of death and rebirth, the constant evolution that occurs through the disintegration and rematerialization of elements. The paintings use a wide range of grays and earth tones, a rusty palette that invites the audience to follow the artist’s process of “reverse archaeology”, a multi-layered exploration; a dive into the past, seeking to trigger a physical and psychological contemplation around form, nature and time. By re-aligning the surrounding temporal and visual information, contained in each instant, the artist intertwines different timelines and contrasts human to natural scales. The works seek to present the variety of processes taking place in nature, through the rejection of the nature/culture binary and its replacement by a more holistic perspective, where human and natural spectrums coexist in totality, affecting each other in the subtlest of ways. Abstraction functions as an alternative architecture, a personal attempt to suggest a private worldview, where emotions and memories sculpt the landscape, intending to understand entropy, not as a chaotic force, but as an evolutionary inevitability.
Balancing between personal observation and speculation, Hall’s paintings merge and divide fragments of time, composing stills of his birthplace combined with impressions of decay. The variations on the medium and the form become a tool for both the artist and the audience; a way to access infinite possibilities of constructing and deconstructing landscapes and reality.
IOLI KAVAKOU | Art Theorist – Artist
