Caleb Hahne Quintana, A Boy that Don't Bleed, Anat Ebgi

(Detail) A Flicker in the Ancient Rhythm, 2025

Flashe and drybrush on linen

74' x 54"

By: Hugh Leeman

Caleb Hahne Quintana's exhibition A Boy that Don't Bleed, at Anat Ebgi, invites viewers on an uncanny coming-of-age odyssey through male vulnerability. The exhibition unfolds as a cinematic narrative connecting the dynamic complexities of the internal landscape with "nature's wrath." The exhibition's title and elements of inspiration are taken from the artist's poem, Manos de Piedra (Hands of Stone)[1], which begins:

A body made of stone

Cracked by natures wrath

Man has his options 

A fork in the path 

Soul of two birds 

Salt of two seas

Blades of cut grass

A boy that don't bleed…

The odyssey's protagonist, a blond-haired boy often bathed in yellow ochre light, strikes a deeply introspective mood evoking a Magical Realist revival in dramatically lit spaces. Counterparted at times by a horse amidst enchanted scenes imbued with inner struggle, the poetry of Quintana's paintings suggests the self-actualization of Joseph Campbell's transformative hero's journey.

The Record Keeper, 2025

Oil and acrylic on clayboard

Artwork 7” x 5”

Etheral realms with glowing tones range a spectrum stretching from two-tiered waterfalls to an enchanted forest, and sleep to struggle, luring viewers into an emotional space documented by The Record Keeper, a diary-sized painting where the artist stands contemplatively in his studio beside an empty easel backdropped by Between Flesh and Stone, another work in the show. Between Flesh and Stone's tenebrism parallels the contrast between the tender nature of tissue and unforgiving substrate of the rocky landscape upon which A Boy that Don't Bleed's protagonist stands, his head hidden by a sapphire blue towel, obscuring the identity he questions. 

Between Flesh and Stone, 2024-2025

Flashe on linen

72" x 46"

Left to our imagination of an open water swim at a half-lit water hole, though never shown, speaks of youth's summer. The swim shorts and towel in blue are a recurring motif that hints at deeper significance, drawing on art history's precious use of the once-rare color. As the boy dries his body, he is light and dark, dry and wet, a contrast of soft tissue and hard rock, themes of a world between the nebulous nature of identity and a solid sense of self, all underscored by the implied changing of clothes, yet to come. 

Specter (Threshold), 2024-25

Oil and flashe on linen

54” x 74”

Quintana's paintings are to witness the solitary moments of a boy becoming a man, internally conflicted, toes atop an edge he doesn't understand, isolated on the picture plane, navigating an emotional terrain, dangerously unfamiliar. In Specter (Threshold), a wild white horse, nearly neon in its contrast against the penumbras of a forest's dark depths, splashes through a river of black with the night sky's reflection in the recurring blue disturbing the still of water with untamed movement. Horses form a part of the artist's family history and a recurring symbol in his visual storytelling, the artist says, "My great-great-grandfather used to steal horses with Pancho Villa for the Mexican Revolution." [2] The boy's spirit manifests in the ancestral story and the colt, a horse born in the wild that is eventually driven from the herd to form one of its own. As the title implies, we witness a spectral form crossing a threshold. Seen here, as the colt crossing a river of black and blue. 

The horse as counterpart is best seen in A Flicker in the Ancient Rhythm. Standing in awe, hands at his side, palms turned out, the protagonist's posture disquieted by his arrival at the cusp of an ongoing half-lit trail. A two-tiered waterfall's crashing mist, combined with the passing of a celestial body's supernatural light, has created a rainbow, suggesting a kaleidoscopic shift in perception. Once again dressed in blue, the boy has taken steps ahead of his horse to marvel at the cascading water central to the more than 6-foot-tall painting. As we admire the brilliance of the painter's poetry, we can momentarily become the boy, standing between luminance and the water hole with hints of the moon reflecting across its ripples, its dark body suggesting the profundities of the unknown and all that lies beyond what light allows us to see. 

(Above) A Flicker in the Ancient Rhythm, 2025, Flashe and drybrush on linen, 74” x 54"

Although the artist plumbs the darkness, he is brilliant for what he holds us with under the bright yellow ochre light. In The Soul Is the Body's Witness, Quintana shows us from above the barefoot boy in blue jeans and a white t-shirt, considering the self through a downward gaze cast across his elongated shadow. The shadow's heart glows amidst its center, creating a sense of spiritual engagement with the alter ego. The scene is calm, blending realism with inquiry under blazing light, and we are witnesses to his confrontation with the intangibility of the internal. The curious yellow-orange light lends the painting a mythic feel, perhaps inspired by the forest fires of the artist's native Colorado, which have appeared in previous paintings, and he speaks of plastering the sky in orangish tints.[3]

(Above) The Soul Is the Body's Witness, 2025, Oil on linen, 76" x 42"

The relative calm confrontation of The Soul Is the Body's Witness erupts like the volcano; Quintana paints in Study of Vesuvius Erupting (Alessandro d'Anna) as the boy is hit by the storm of shadow and self in The Boy Fights Himself. Backdropped by a tree bent to its trunk's extreme nature mirrors the corporeal struggle between the boy who won't bleed and the elements within. The inevitable inner conflict has turned to violence, recalling the ancient Judeo-Christian conflict of Jacob wrestling the angel, visually synthesizing humans' ongoing conflict between shadow and self. Artists from Rembrandt to Chagall and Delacroix to Gauguin have painted the story inspired by the book of Genesis, which presents the event as "And Jacob was left alone; and there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day." [4]

(Above) Study of Vesuvius Erupting (Alessandro d'Anna), 2024, Gouache on paper, 12” x 9”

The Boy Fights Himself, 2025

Oil on linen

30” x 40"

The seeming opposites of conflict and internal exploration interestingly parallel Quintana's personal life, an amateur boxer who trains in jiu-jitsu, a submission-based wrestling. The artist notes, "I've always been involved in these, really, I guess, violent or intense expressions. But then my work is the opposite of that. I really try to harness the power and complexities of these sensitivities. Human beings are more than just one instrument." [2]

The confrontation in The Boy Fights Himself is clearly internal as identical figures of the boy, both in blue shorts, illustrate the shadow and the self in a heightened state of violence, with feet on the ground, the boy throws his alter-ego in a belly-to-back suplex of ancient Grecian wrestling. In the book of Genesis, Jacob violently engages the angel, pleading for a blessing. Wrestling through the night, Jacob ultimately receives his blessing, yet is injured in the process. In Quintana's painting, we are eye-level witnesses to the impending corporeal crash landing that shakes the deepest sense of one's identity. 

The picture, freed of cultural symbolism, elevates the scene to the universality of psychological allegory. Through suspending the shadow in flight, illuminated under a golden light, despite the violence, perhaps, the painting suggests, this conflict is the path towards transcendence. Echoing such potential, Quintana's poem, from which the exhibition's title is taken [1], concludes:

You asked me how I got there 

But you created the ache 

What good is your heart

If it does not break

Hour Without Shadow, 2024, Oil on linen, 24” x 46"

The conflict under golden light returns to a dimly lit space of vulnerability in Hour Without Shadow. The boy in blue shorts rests on a couch. The tenebrism of light graces his near-nude body backdropped by a darkness almost black, contrasted by the suggestion of a light left on in the distance. Ring on his finger, the boy's body, no longer clutched in the violence of wrestling's flight, is caught in a dream, enveloped in dark and light. The artist has said of his practice, "When it comes to making the place I want it to seem like somewhere but also nowhere." [3] The drama of light enhances the ambiguity of place, and Quintana's cropping of the figure places us close enough to hear his inhales, heightening the psychological weight of his solitary stillness in color fields that create a sense of spiritual suspension. 

(L) Over The Hills, 2024, Gouache on paper, 6.5” x 12” (R) Let's Talk (After Friedrich), 2024, Gouache and wax pastel on paper, 10.75” x 6.25”

Amidst the grand themes of inner struggle and the path through the darkness of self found in the exhibition's large-scale paintings, it is the small pieces in the show, like Let's Talk (After Friedrich) and Over The Hills, that pull the narrative together. The cinematic beauty of such small pieces acts as a sequence of short shots as if a montage, condensing time, thematically constructing connections. The boy, in an exploration of self, appears awakened by the thought that it was all more than just a dream. He is the protagonist of a hero's journey, the paintings akin to what Joseph Campbell called the artifacts of the journey, documenting the artist's heeding the call to adventure, encountering conflict and confronting the ordeal to be resurrected after passing through the dark, back from across a threshold through which Quintana like all great storytellers emotionally engages as he skillfully keeps us wanting more while subconsciously reminding us of ourselves.  

Citations:

1. Anat Ebgi Gallery Inc. “Caleb Hahne Quintana: A Boy That Don’t Bleed - ANAT EBGI GALLERY.” ANAT EBGI GALLERY, 15 Aug. 2025, anatebgi.com/exhibitions/caleb-hahne-quintana-a-boy-that-dont-bleed.

2.Editor -- Evan. Juxtapoz Magazine - Caleb Hahne Quintana: A Permission of Otherness. www.juxtapoz.com/news/magazine/features/caleb-hahne-quintana-a-permission-of-otherness.

3.Newchild Gallery. "Newchild Voices | in Conversation With Caleb Hahne Quintana." YouTube, 30 Apr. 2024, www.youtube.com/watch?v=R32SYERUn8o.

4. "Genesis 32:24-32 (KJV)." Bible Gateway, www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis%2032%3A24-32&version=KJV.