Dieter Hall A Naked Chair

Dieter Hall portrays man thrown back on himself. Ecce Homo, behold the manwithout his social attributes, often nude, in splendid isolation. Hall seeks the common denominatormetonymically called the Naked Chairof mere existence in the images of others (mostly male) bodies. He regards things, objects, gardens and landscapes with the same searching gaze. His minutely arranged still lifesa glass, a flower, a chair call to mind Bonnard and Matisse. Halls 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 Neels psychological realism and the work of photographers like David Armstrong and Peter Hujar. Hall was friends with Hujar and moved in the same sceneuntil the latters early death from AIDS. Photography plays a key part in Halls work though never as an end in itself: it helps him compose his pictures. He selects detailsa foot or a hand, for exampleand 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.