Photography or art?

Photo: Collection of the artist

John Hall, Muñeca, 1992, acrylic on canvas

Visitors to a new exhibition at the Kelowna Art Gallery may have difficulty believing that the incredibly life-like paintings on view are not photographs. Many of the paintings by Kelowna-based artist John Hall feature ordinary objects painted in extraordinary detail – a doughnut with its chocolate glaze soft and dripping; a drying rack stacked with dishes sitting on a counter; strands of brightly coloured licorice and other assorted candies displayed on a reflective platter.
 
The seventy works in this solo show comprise a remarkable window into the artist’s production, with the most recent piece having being completed only weeks before the exhibition opened. The show is hung chronologically, and reveals the shift of Hall’s attention over the years, as his richly orchestrated and constructed still-lifes have evolved in fascinating ways.
 
 In the 1990s Hall began to exploit the information and results possible by using digital photography and Adobe Photoshop™. With this shift, his work was no longer about exactly what his eyes saw, but what he could achieve with these new processes, as they fed into his work.
 
Since moving to Kelowna in 1999 Hall has completed several series of work, all of still-life subjects, that have included donuts, candies, groups of small stones, tea cups, coffee mugs, and a stack of CDs. His most recent works have focused on fruits and vegetables.
 
The exhibition is accompanied by a 144-page, full-colour book, published by Black Dog Publishing in the UK. It includes colour reproductions of all of the works in the show and also texts by curator of the Kelowna Art Gallery, Liz Wylie, and by Calgary-based artist Alexandra Haeseker, a long-time collaborator and colleague of Hall’s.
 
The exhibition will run until July 10 and for more information go to www.kelownaartgallery.com or call 250-762-2226