Alexander Hayden (b. 1993) is a painter based in Austin, Texas. He has been making images since he was fourteen; a compulsion he has periodically tried, and failed, to suppress.
Hayden’s surfaces evoke an interior condition: the subconscious photographed on aging film. Working at large scale in charcoal, pastel, and oil, he constructs images that occupy the liminal space between what can be seen and what refuses to be shown.
Veiled figures move through fields of fire or darkness. Multiplied hands cling to impermanent forms. Text emerges only to resist legibility. The work concerns itself with desire and its consequences—the weight of reaching for what refuses to be grasped.
Indebted to the tenebrism of the seventeenth century but stripped of its didactic imperative, the paintings invert their inheritance: trained methods in service of untrained visions. Where the Baroque sought to instruct, Hayden’s compositions offer no such covenant with the viewer. The paintings are not desperate to be understood—and frequently thwart the attempt.
Hayden works from images that arrive complete. His practice is making them visible. Asked what they mean, he has yet to provide a useful answer.
Hayden has maintained a rigorous studio practice for nearly two decades, and has exhibited at Dacia Gallery (NYC), Ground Floor Gallery (NYC), Zhou B Art Center (Chicago), Wausau Museum of Contemporary Art (WI), the Salmagundi Club (NYC), among others.
Hayden’s surfaces evoke an interior condition: the subconscious photographed on aging film. Working at large scale in charcoal, pastel, and oil, he constructs images that occupy the liminal space between what can be seen and what refuses to be shown.
Veiled figures move through fields of fire or darkness. Multiplied hands cling to impermanent forms. Text emerges only to resist legibility. The work concerns itself with desire and its consequences—the weight of reaching for what refuses to be grasped.
Indebted to the tenebrism of the seventeenth century but stripped of its didactic imperative, the paintings invert their inheritance: trained methods in service of untrained visions. Where the Baroque sought to instruct, Hayden’s compositions offer no such covenant with the viewer. The paintings are not desperate to be understood—and frequently thwart the attempt.
Hayden works from images that arrive complete. His practice is making them visible. Asked what they mean, he has yet to provide a useful answer.
Hayden has maintained a rigorous studio practice for nearly two decades, and has exhibited at Dacia Gallery (NYC), Ground Floor Gallery (NYC), Zhou B Art Center (Chicago), Wausau Museum of Contemporary Art (WI), the Salmagundi Club (NYC), among others.