The boy that don't bleed

"Caleb Hahne Quintana paints in the sun-bleached palette of his native Colorado. From afar, his canvases seem effortless in their clarity; up close, layers of paint dragged, blended, and muddied into hundreds of subtle shades resolve into a single limb or a patch of sky. His latest series, A Boy That Don't Bleed, on view at Anat Ebgi through October 18, 2025, pushes this concern with paint into new psychic terrain."

"Most of Hahne Quintana's paintings start as drawings on white paper. Last year, he bought a block of black paper by mistake. "I decided to use it," he recalls, "and discovered a completely new way of seeing color." What followed were months of experiments until his sketches no longer faded into the darker ground but hovered and pulsed as if lit from within."

"At Anat Ebgi, the show opens with The Reader (2025), a man half-swallowed by shadow, his book open to unreadable pages. The light that strikes him has no certain origin, recalling Caravaggio's chiaroscuro, and his talent for theatrics. It could be the spill of a lamp, or the errant glow of another world. "That uncertainty lends an eeriness to the work," Hahne Quintana says, noting he had the Italian master in mind as he painted."

Caleb Hahne Quintana paints in a sun-bleached Colorado palette, layering dragged, blended, and muddied paint into hundreds of subtle shades that resolve into limbs or patches of sky. A Boy That Don't Bleed advances concerns with paint into psychic terrain through luminous figures emerging from darkness. A mistaken purchase of black paper prompted experiments that made sketches hover and pulse as if lit from within. The Reader (2025) presents a man half-swallowed by shadow under uncertain light recalling Caravaggio's chiaroscuro. Parable logic animates the series as figures confront shadows against landscapes tied to the San Luis Valley and uranium 'yellowcake' legacies.

Read at Documentjournal