Kate Mosher Hall at Hannah Hoffman Gallery

Kate Mosher Hall, Clothing as a spell (2024). Acrylic and flashe on canvas, 55 x 65 inches. Image courtesy of the artist and Hannah Hoffman Gallery, Los Angeles. Photo: Paul Salveson.

Never Odd or Even, Kate Mosher Hall’s current exhibition at Hannah Hoffman Gallery, features black-and-white paintings that seem to glitch, distort, and buzz like a staticky TV screen. As the exhibition’s title suggests, an indeterminacy pervades Mosher Hall’s works—the phrase “never odd or even” is also a palindrome, which feels appropriate. The paintings constantly oscillate as images come in and out of focus, defying any rigid binary between representation and abstraction. The paintings are composed of even, rectilinear forms but the images they depict are hazy, out-of-focus, odd. Mosher Hall’s care for the formal qualities of light, perspective, figuration, and abstraction creates a sort of visual palindrome that occupies a third space, somewhere between even and odd.

The paintings are quite large, with many measuring over six by six feet. Yet each work is composed of such small and intricately detailed dots and lines that they never feel imposing. 31,556,952 seconds (all works 2024) depicts a melting candle. The image is layered on top of itself in successively smaller dimensions, emphasizing the indeterminacy of a flame and wax’s transitory qualities. The effect is reminiscent of an infinity mirror; the painting is vertiginous and unstable. Approaching the focal point just below the painting’s center, my eyes shift focus from the overall image to its composite parts. Finally, I see that this painting is effectively drawn from a single line. As the line spirals around itself in concentric rectangles, the image of the melting candle slowly comes into focus. Mosher Hall varies the thickness of the single line and the gap between each “ring” at various parts to generate perspective and depth. 31,556,952 seconds is one of what Mosher Hall calls her “’recursion” paintings, in which a single image telescopes until it becomes an uncanny distortion of itself.¹ This graphic manipulation moves the painting further from the clear image of a melting candle, plunging us back into an indeterminate space between abstraction and representation.

Across the gallery, Clothing as a spell depicts five blurred silhouettes that seem to emerge from a long-forgotten silent film. They walk from left to right, though any further context is impossible to grasp. One figure seems to turn her head back towards the viewer as if recognizing something out of the corner of her eye. Confronted with the life-size figures, the viewer becomes a voyeur. Tiny dots form a loose grid over the image, creating a screen that obscures the figures and prevents them from coming into focus. The figures seem to sense, though not acknowledge, our presence, as if the mesh-like screen warps their view of us as well. Here, the painting is not a passive image to be consumed but a tool to activate and implicate the viewer in a process of mutual formation. In this ongoing process, the viewer joins the indeterminate space occupied by these hazy figures. This moment—where the paintings seem to vibrate, oscillating as the viewer’s eyes adjust and readjust—is where the work comes to life. Mosher Hall’s paintings open up a generative space that welcomes the blurred line between the known and unknown, the viewer and the viewed.

Kate Mosher Hall: Never Odd or Even runs from February 17–March 23, 2024 at Hannah Hoffman Gallery (2504 W. 7th St., Ste. C, Los Angeles, CA 90057).

Kate Mosher Hall, Never Odd or Even (installation view) (2024). Image courtesy of the artist and Hannah Hoffman Gallery, Los Angeles. Photo: Paul Salveson.

Kate Mosher Hall, Never Odd or Even (installation view) (2024). Image courtesy of the artist and Hannah Hoffman Gallery, Los Angeles. Photo: Paul Salveson.

Kate Mosher Hall, Squeeze wax (installation view) (2024). Acrylic, flashe, charcoal, and color pencil on canvas, 92 x 84 inches. Image courtesy of the artist and Hannah Hoffman Gallery, Los Angeles. Photo: Paul Salveson.

Kate Mosher Hall, Never Odd or Even (installation view) (2024). Image courtesy of the artist and Hannah Hoffman Gallery, Los Angeles. Photo: Paul Salveson.

Kate Mosher Hall, Never Odd or Even (installation view) (2024). Image courtesy of the artist and Hannah Hoffman Gallery, Los Angeles. Photo: Paul Salveson.

Kate Mosher Hall, 31,556,952 seconds (installation view) (2024). Acrylic and charcoal on canvas, 80 x 72 inches. Image courtesy of the artist and Hannah Hoffman Gallery, Los Angeles. Photo: Paul Salveson.

Kate Mosher Hall, Pull up pull up (installation view) (2024). Acrylic and charcoal on canvas; diptych, 90 x 160 inches. Image courtesy of the artist and Hannah Hoffman Gallery, Los Angeles. Photo: Paul Salveson.

Kate Mosher Hall, Hit silver (installation view) (2024). Acrylic and flashe on canvas, 52 x 50 inches. Image courtesy of the artist and Hannah Hoffman Gallery, Los Angeles. Photo: Paul Salveson.

Kate Mosher Hall, Hit silver (detail) (2024). Acrylic and flashe on canvas, 52 x 50 inches. Image courtesy of the artist and Hannah Hoffman Gallery, Los Angeles. Photo: Paul Salveson.

Sampson Ohringer is a Los Angeles-based writer, originally from Chicago. His research interests focus on global shipping and logistics networks as they intersect with other disciplines.

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