FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Christina Hale
“Executive Mansion, Hotel California”
February 3 through 28, 2001
Reception for the artist: Saturday February 3, 2001 from 6 to 8pm
Robert Berman Gallery, D5 Projects
Bergamot Station Art Center
2525 Michigan Avenue, D-5, Santa Monica, CA 90404
Phone: (310) 315-1937, Fax: (310) 315-9688
E-mail: berman@artnet.net
Web site: robertbermangallery.com
Gallery Hours: Tuesday through Saturday, 11am to 6pm
“Artistic imagination without the skill to create a viable art is as pointless as virtuosity without vision. These are not issues concerning the art of Christina Hale. She has poise and purpose in her creativity.
"Her art recalls the dark vision of Phillip Guston’s late work while also displaying the visual equivalence of today’s nihilistic yet vital hip hop music. The art of Christina Hale is anarchistic yet thoughtful; sad yet exuberant. It is exciting to watch the development of this young artist.”
--Robert Flynn Johnson
Curator in Charge
Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts
Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco
The work of Christina Hale unabashedly blends the techniques of Social Realism and German Expressionism with graffiti sub-culture and then some. Her powerful drawings, done with graphite on large paper segments ripped off of a roll and oil on canvas, reveal cultural collisions. Her works have a very urban feel; they are stories told of street life, family, violence and reality. This is juxtaposed with the physicality of the art itself as something more celebrated by an intellectual elitism. Her drawings are dynamic. It is this vitality that not only compounds these polarities but also breathes life into the work that the viewer can then experience. Hale’s inspiration stems not only from her life experience but different facets of history as well. Her work encompasses all of these things, and together with a great technical skill, Christina Hale creates a completely new artistic vocabulary to be experienced.
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