Dieter Hall portrays man thrown back on himself. Ecce Homo, behold the man\u2014without his social attributes, often nude, in splendid isolation. Hall seeks the common denominator\u2014metonymically called the Naked Chair\u2014of mere existence in the images of others\u2019 (mostly male) bodies. He regards things, objects, gardens and landscapes with the same searching gaze. His minutely arranged still lifes\u2014a glass, a flower, a chair \u2013 call to mind Bonnard and Matisse. Hall\u2019s bare chairs are recurrent silent echoes of isolation and transience, intensified by the dark shadow the AIDS epidemic cast on his life and work while living in New York. Although his works are not referential in the traditional sense, Hall reacts to the works of other artists, including painter Alice Neel\u2019s psychological realism and the work of photographers like David Armstrong and Peter Hujar. Hall was friends with Hujar and moved in the same scene\u2014until the latter\u2019s early death from AIDS. Photography plays a key part in Hall\u2019s work \u2014 though never as an end in itself: it helps him compose his pictures. He selects details\u2014a foot or a hand, for example\u2014and transposes them into painterly renditions, wholly reinventing the subject portrayed in the process. The resulting works, characterized above all by their radical intimacy, tell of isolation and a deep-seated need for connection.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dieter Hall portrays man thrown back on himself. Ecce Homo, behold the man\u2014without his social attributes, often nude, in splendid isolation. Hall seeks the common denominator\u2014metonymically called the Naked Chair\u2014of mere existence in the images of others\u2019 (mostly male) bodies. He regards things, objects, gardens and landscapes with the same searching gaze. His minutely arranged […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":4894,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"product_brand":[],"product_cat":[1485],"product_tag":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-4890","1":"product","2":"type-product","3":"status-publish","4":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"product_cat-patrick-frey","8":"first","9":"instock","10":"shipping-taxable","11":"purchasable","12":"product-type-simple"},"yoast_head":"\n