I F*ing Hate Chess

IF*ing Hate Chess is Jake Hall at his most sardonic and incisive, transforming the rigid logic of strategy into an emotional battlefield. At first glance, the painting presents itself as a loose, abstracted game board a grid of ochre squares floating over a dusty mauve field but the surface quickly destabilises, exploding into a swirling mass of marks, scrawls, and painterly disruptions.

Hall uses oil paint not to illustrate the rules of the game, but to dismantle them. Thegrid structure fractures under the weight of impulsive gestures: looping circles, dragged red lines, scratched text, and areas of scraped-back pigment. Aburst of crimson energy erupts near the top of the canvas, like a sudden emotional strike or an unexpected move. Opposite it, a large, spiralling ring floats with frenetic intensity, recalling the chalky turbulence of Cy Twombly or the psychological unraveling found in Philip Guston’s late work.

Words surface and dissolve across the board “same,” “move,” “love,” “outside,” “worn,” “you,” “out,” “enter” functioning less as clues and more as footnotes to a broader internal monologue. Their placement feels deliberate yet intuitive, as though Hall is mapping the agitation, frustration, or repetition inherent in both chess and life. The title, scrawled aggressively across the bottom in red oil stick, breaks any remaining sense of order. It becomes both punchline and confession.

The tension between the strict geometry of the grid and the chaotic energy of the surrounding marks creates the painting’s central drama. Hall uses the chessboard as a metaphor for systems, expectations, and imposed structures and then rebels against it with the freedom of raw expression. The work becomes an anti-strategy painting, a rejection of overthinking, a protest against the pressure to calculate every move.

Despite its humour and provocation, the painting carries emotional weight. The disruptions, erasures, and contradictions mirror a human state the desire to break out of patterns, out of roles, out of rules. In this way, the painting is far less about chess and far more about the emotional exhaustion of navigating life’s “game board.”

Ultimately, IF*ing Hate Chess is a declaration of resistance. Arefusal to play by the expected rules. Apainting that visually performs frustration, defiance, and liberation all while maintaining Hall’s unmistakable balance of vulnerability, wit, and painterly confidence.

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