My initial exposure to Doug Hall's work came about five years ago. At the time, I was in my first year of graduate school at the California College of Arts and Crafts. In one of my classes we were shown, The Eternal Frame. This satirical film, a collaboration between two collectives, T.R. Uthco and Ant Farm, recreated JFK's assassination. Hall, a founding member of the former multi-media performance group, played Kennedy. For a native San Franciscan, he was pretty convincing with his New England accent. At the time, I wasn't familiar with either collective, but I appreciated the spirit of the video as it scrutinized the media's handling of JFK's death.

That was pretty much it for Doug Hall and I, until about a few months ago when we were both included in an exhibition called, Downtime: Constructing Leisure. Hall had two photos in the show, one of which I recall was a large image of a pool at a Las Vegas hotel. The picture was quite pleasing on a formal level, but compared to The Eternal Frame it was rather underwhelming.

When I learned that Hall was having a solo show I was curious to learn a bit more about his work. Perhaps the images in the aforementioned group show were just an aberration and a solo show would showcase that revolutionary spirit that I found so appealing in his Kennedy film.

Hall's exhibition consists of a dozen large-scale photographs of various tourist spots around the globe, including the Eiffel Tower, The Grand Canyon and a striking vista in Yosemite Valley. The pictures are formally stunning in terms of color and composition. But as I strolled through the show trying to understand what Hall was after, I started to feel like I was looking for Waldo. With the exception of three pictures, all of the scenes feature a smattering of people, in some, in the foreground, in others in the background. Surely, Hall must be up to something, there must be something provocative in those crowds. Maybe the artist himself was in those shots, looking at the looker, kind of like in that Anne Collier photo of a vacant Dodger Stadium (until you spot Collier, a speck in the bleachers). But alas, there was no Waldo.

I read through the press release to try to glean a tad more information. And as I read about critiques of advertising and scale of tourism, I nodded my head. I understood all of that, but I couldn't shake my thoughts of Hall as Kennedy and that sense of idealism that tends to accompany youth. It made me think of other artists of his generation, people like Chris Burden and Vito Acconci, and how their work has also become fairly tame as the years have gone by. I have to admit that the idea of having shows, selling work and picking up accolades along the way is appealing, but if it's at the expense of idealism, I'm not so sure it is worth it.

http://www.renabranstengallery.com/Hall_Tour05.html