When I spoke to Caleb Hahne Quintana at his latest opening, AURORA, at Anat Ebgi in Los Angeles, he mentioned this idea that his work was described as "metafiction." Often in his paintings, especially in AURORA, Caleb is creating paintings places he knows with the faces and memories he can't quite confirm is fantasy or fact. It's as if he is letting the memories ebb and flow like the tides, entering into his mind and then allowing them to overtake the story in the work. It's fascinating and a wonderful practice of meditation and honoring what the mind perceives to be a distinct memory. In a way, it creates a haze over the work, which, indeed, Caleb paints.
What Caleb creating here were a group of paintings that are about his childhood in Aurora, Colorado, with the lens of his aged self. That he went back to Aurora to create soundscapes that are played in the gallery, that his friends and family mythically enter into the works as if unearthed from another time, that his studies and drawings are also present here makes for an encompassing look into his life. As the gallery notes, "Through his nostalgic exploration of place, Hahne Quintana proves that environments can encapsulate specific states of mind, and states of being through meditative, nuanced observation."
The show is both nuanced and yet eternally expansive. Nothing seems more apt than the cup of water held to starry sky, celestial and nurturing, a glass half full or half empty and open to your own interpretations. That's the beauty of trying to go home. There's so many directions it can take you. —Evan Pricco
