For Frieze, Van Hanos pursues painting as a technology of capture, one that extends and nuances a photographic process. Working from camera images shot in rapid succession, he produces meticulous oil renderings that dwell on the barely-perceptible variations between moments. The retinal space between each work – both at the moment of the image’s capture and the moment the painting is experienced in the fair booth and beyond – becomes an important substance of these works. The resulting suite thus plays with doubling and repetition, inviting misidentifications by the viewer that subtly foreground the gaps between body and recording apparatus. It is a simple gesture that underscores memory’s status as a slippery structure, but also resonates with the many processes of inscription that define lived experience and shared histories. Thus, Hanos reengages the problem of history painting in a contemporary context, subverting the heroic for a series of fractured, intimate encounters.

Van Hanos (b. 1979, Edison, NJ) currenlty lives and works in Marfa, Texas. Recent solo exhibitions include Mommy’s Boy, Celopatra’s, New York; Late American Paintings, Château Shatto, Los Angeles; Awake At The Funeral, Tanya Leighton, Berlin; Van Hanos, Parapet Real Humans, St. Louis; Intercalaris, Rowhouse Project, Baltimore; and Van Hanos, West Street Gallery, New York. Selected group exhibitions include An Uncanny Likeness, Simon Lee Gallery, New York; The Lazy Sunbathers, Sies + Höke, Düsseldorf; The Ninth Season of The Artist’s Institute with Carolee Schneemann, The Artist’s Institute, New York; Call and Response, Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, New York; and Looking Back: The Ninth White Columns Annual, White Columns, New York. His work has been reviewed in Flash Art, Artforum, Art in America, and the New York Times Magazine. Hanos studied at the School of the Arts at Columbia University, New York and the Maryland Institute College of Art Baltimore, Maryland.