Caleb Hahne Quintana: AURORA

Anat Ebgi is pleased to announce AURORA, a solo exhibition by Caleb Hahne Quintana on view at 6150 Wilshire Blvd, November 5 – December 17, 2022. This is the artist’s first solo exhibition with the gallery in Los Angeles. An opening reception will take place Saturday, November 5 from 5 – 8pm.

The exhibition title refers to the largely suburban city neighboring Denver where Hahne Quintana grew up. Making home his subject, he approaches tenderly, showing a sense of care in capturing the personal and familiar. Across portraiture, landscape, and still life paintings, each work depicts someone or a specific place known personally to the artist. As he explains, “Everyone is from some place. I used to wish I was from somewhere else. This show is a homecoming of being grateful and proud of where I am from.” 

In addition to paintings, AURORA includes a selection of colored pencil, ink, and gouache drawings on paper presented together in one gallery. The artist whose process begins with drawing describes it as a “liberating act which precedes the more arduous act of painting.” Hahne Quintana also produced a soundscape for the exhibition featuring field recordings from specific locations such as parks or shopping centers. The audio component, like a movie score, adds a sensuous layer of texture to painted memories, transporting viewers to Aurora. Like his paintings, the artist elevates the mundane to the profound, the overlooked to the monumental through his reflections on place as an emotionally charged subject.

Scale operates as content in this exhibition. A suite of intimate snapshot-size works seem to express the desire to hold memories as if they are objects—portraits of friends, the artist, his cat, etc. A still life of a Columbine, the state flower, contrasts against a much larger work depicting a heroic young male, a 21st century cowboy, leaning on a forest green 2000s Jaguar; both are treated with wonderment, charged and innocuous. Those familiar with the pure tones of dawn and dusk in the high desert will recognize such sensitivity in the radiance of light in these works. 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.

Special thanks to musician Rogelio Montes for his contributions as collaborator on the exhibition soundscape. (Listen Here)

Caleb Hahne Quintana (b. 1993, Denver, CO) received a BFA in Fine Arts from Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design. He has exhibited his work widely in group and solo exhibitions at Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, FL; Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO; albertz benda, Los Angeles, CA; Alexander Berggruen, New York, NY; 1969 Gallery, New York, NY; Carlye Packer, Palm Springs, CA; Kunstraum Potsdam, Germany; Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles, CA; PM/AM, London, UK; and The FLAG Art Foundation, New York, NY. His residencies include 1969 Gallery Residency, The Cabin LA, ShowPen, RedLine Contemporary Art Center and Adventure Painting. His work was recently acquired by the Denver Art Museum, High Museum of Art, and the Institute of Contemporary Art Miami where his work is currently on view in their collection exhibition Fire Figure Fantasy. Hahne Quintana currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.