Anita Rogers Gallery is pleased to present Anticlimb, Phil Hale’s first major show since 2017, and his debut exhibition with the gallery. The show will feature new, large-scale paintings alongside collages and works on paper. The exhibition will be on view March 5 through April 12 at 494 Greenwich Street, Ground Floor in New York City. The gallery will host an opening reception with the artist on Wednesday, March 5, 6-8pm. Please RSVP via this link.

Hale's early career was in commissioned work and portraiture (he painted Tony Blair's official portrait for the Houses of Parliament), but the last fifteen years have been spent building something else entirely. Rooted in images the artist chances upon, these paintings seem to invent themselves—one association leading to another—generating a set of potentials that work both with and against each other. The resulting paintings are strange and masterful glimpses into imagined narratives. Many of the works in Anticlimb center around the image of a car crash, a loaded symbol that conjures the real incarnation of male futility, of the modern illusion of control, of the suddenness and undeniability of total destruction - even a prickle of Warhol’s po-faced delivery - and on and on. In the same way the crumpled vehicle at the crash site becomes a record of its own demise, these paintings become records of their own creation, sparking countless associations in the viewers’ minds. All works in this show were made in the last year and have not been exhibited previously; the paintings will be accompanied by a selection of preparatory drawings.

Phil Hale (b. 1963, Boston) is a figurative painter who lives and works in London. Hale was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1963. After an extended apprenticeship to artist Richard Berry, he moved to the United Kingdom in 1985. His early work included prestigious illustration commissions for Stephen King, RayGun, Playboy Magazine and Spectrum. In 2000, he was awarded Third Place in the BP Portrait Award at the National Portrait Gallery in London; in 2001, he was awarded Second Place. Hale’s portrait commissions include Prime Minister Tony Blair’s official portrait for the House of Commons in London, which was completed in 2007. His works have been exhibited internationally, with solo shows in London and New York. Today, they hang in public museums and collections, including the Palace of Westminster, Lord’s Cricket Ground and the National Portrait Gallery, as well as corporate collections, including Sony and Warner Bros.