Hall’s creative approach is strongly influenced by his childhood experiences as the son of a marine. His paintings, participatory works, sculptures, and videos are often grounded in an exploration of military aesthetics.
During his time at the Lucas Artists Program, Hall began a new body of work entitled Correspondence , which was inspired by his rediscovery of a cache of letters his father had written to him while deployed in Iraq during Operation Desert Storm. The moving experience of rereading these letters twenty years after he first received them began to inform a new series of paintings, drawings, and videos based on the letters and cultural signifiers from the period. Painstakingly tracing his father’s handwriting to recreate these letters, Hall reconnected with his teenage self and middle-aged father—who, serendipitously, was the same age then as Hall is now—across time and space.
In addition to Correspondence , Hall also created a series of new mixed-media works in which he repurposed and recontextualized military surplus materials. He describes how he is often drawn to the systematic, pragmatic aesthetics of these materials and their complex personal histories: they were once functional objects, carried, filled with possessions, and belonging to someone.
Hall’s practice complicates the art world’s often antagonistic relationship toward the military. In his diverse works, he is often able to express the humanity of the men and women of the armed services, and move beyond the more abstract and easily dismissed concepts of force, defense, and protection.