JANUARY 11 – MARCH 1, 2023

Opening Reception with the Artist
SOCO Annex | Wednesday, January 11, 6 – 8 PM

SOCO Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of Speak Into Existence, a solo exhibition by artist Roscoe Hall. The gallery will host a public reception with the artist on Wednesday, January 11th in SOCO Annex from 6 – 8 PM.  This will be the artist’s first solo exhibition with SOCO Gallery.

Hall (American, b. 1978) examines the Black experience in America through his richly layered paintings.  Working mostly with oil, oil stick and acrylic paint on canvas, the artist includes a variety of symbolic and unconventional recycled materials from the home and kitchen in his work.  Hall grinds coffee and cotton, mixing them into his paints, adds charcoal, rayon and chianti, and applies them all to the surface of his canvas. 

In Out of the Way, a portrait of his grandmother, aunt, and sister, Hall uses burlap, sativa, bamboo along with intangible items like “Mary J. Blige’s song My Life on repeat” and the words “just tryin’ to cope.” The artist’s “ingredient list” (as he calls it) is written on the back of the painting for reference. The artist builds layer upon layer in each piece, adding to the complexity of each of his figures while simultaneously rooting them in a larger narrative about personal history, place and family traditions and the larger legacy of African  American culture.  

His career as a renowned chef on Bravo “Top Chef” and his family-owned BBQ restaurants and roots in Chicago and Alabama inform all of his artistic outputs. “Touching on personal gains and losses within human interactions is the basis of this body of work.” says Hall.  His paintings are ”..signposts or markers on a multi-hyphenate life: artist, chef, father, husband, musician, punk, irreverent iconoclast…they are as connected with Hall’s being as they are about how it is to be, and particularly, to be Black.” (Alabama Life & Culture, 2021) 

The title of the exhibition, Speak Into Existence, highlights “positive progression and dodging the negative in which we are surrounded by so often.”

Roscoe Hall (b. 1978)

Roscoe Hall is a painter living and working in Birmingham, Alabama. He has been a working chef simultaneously while practicing his craft for 27 years. He received his B.F.A. in photography from the University of San Diego and his M.A. from the Savannah College of Art and Design. Hall’s works have been exhibited at the Ralph Mark Gilbert Civil Rights Museum, Savannah, GA; Graeter Art Gallery, Portland, OR; Lowe Mill Galley, Huntsville, AL; Scott Miller Projects, Birmingham, AL; James Baron Art Gallery; Kent, CT and the Abroms-Engel Institute for the Visual Arts, Birmingham, AL.