About this project

Be a part of the solution and even own a piece of it! Or own original photographs! This body of 500 paintings I call Language because it engages in the potential of mark, gesture, symbol, and sign to evoke meaning. It springs out of an interest in visual language, visual relationships (the grid and color), and experimentation. The piece was pivotal in my development as it signaled a transformation in my work from literal figuration & conscious signs of civilization toward the more deeply subconscious. Remaining in my possession there are 400+ of the original 500 small oil paintings on chroma paper. They measure 6” x 9” each and were painted in 2 months in the summer of 1999. Currently most of them are stuck to their interleaving after several years in storage. I’ve consulted with an art restoration person and have figured out how to deal with them. It will be tedious and time consuming at best, and I need to hire someone to help me relieve them of their interleaving. I figure it will take 250-300 hours of labor to unstick them all. Then I’ll pin them all up on the walls of my house and organize them into groups, scan them, and then I hope to mount all of the groups on archival, framed boards as I have already with a few groups of 16. Otherwise I risk losing the remaining 400+ physically and virtually, since I have only scanned the ones that have gone out the door - it's a big project to document! I have a rough, pieced together photo of the entire 500 on my website if you want to check it out or check out my other work. The image doesn’t do it justice and you can imagine what high resolution image will look like instead - fabulous!: http://www.shawnhall.org/gallery/small_paintings/index.php

The history of the piece goes like this: Language was first shown in full as vertical rows of column like grids in a show called ‘Lived In’ at Jonathan Ferrara Gallery in New Orleans in 1999. The grids looked much like they do in the photo above in my old studio. In the show they functioned as the wallpaper, which is why they were in columns, although they really are amazing as one big grid. They were up once for about a year in my old apartment on 3 big walls, which is as close as they have come to showing as a full grid. They were also a part of 2 other installations: one a solo show called ‘It’s All Cake’ at the Waiting Room in New Orleans, where they were strung like prayer flags/party decoration through out the gallery, and then in a collaborative installation in Columbus, OH, at Acme Art in a show called ‘BACKWASH: Cru de Viscera’. Groups of 16 have been shown in NYC at the Lincoln Center and in my studio in Tribeca when I was in residence with the LMCC. Less than 100 of them live in private collections from NYC, Los Angeles, Baltimore and New Orleans, to London and Hong Kong. I’d love to have them all find homes. This is a daunting task and I would be grateful for your help to restore and document these paintings! I hope you decide to be a part of it! Thanks!! Shawn