RF Alvarez x Caleb Hahne Quintana

RF Alvarez

I'm a huge fan, man. Thank you for taking the time to talk.

Caleb Hahne Quintana

Yeah, likewise.

This new body work you put together is really something. What I love about your work is you've really sunk into this idea of myth-making and creating allegoric spaces. So much of my work has previously been real life moments. Painting is how I process the world, and I imagine you too. Trying to understand my place in all of this–in the Texas landscape and my heritage, and I’m just starting to get into the allegorical creation. I’ve really been impressed by how you're using imagery to tell a more emotional story, something happening beneath the surface.

Caleb

I appreciate you saying all that, and I want to reciprocate the sentiment of the way I've been looking at your work. One of the paintings I really love is Gimme Shelter. That painting was super fascinating. It’s really tipping into this mythic, almost compression of time.

Yeah, yeah removed from reality. One of the things I thought was interesting, and I do want to talk about, is the description of a more somber tone to the work. I think your color palette has sort of retreated. And I feel the same way about this body work I just made too. There's a somberness to it.

Caleb

You know, the ‘somber’ adjective was kind of placed on these paintings. That was one that I hadn't thought of. Those paintings kind of stemmed out of an accident. Painting with color has always been like the highlight of my work, I guess? People have always kind of talked about it, which is funny, because I never used color early on in my career, mostly because I just didn’t know how.

Me too! I had like two years of black and white. It took awhile to figure out, for sure.

Caleb

I mean it’s intimidating.

Yes, absolutely. How much are you coming in with, when you put together a show like this, with intention of the narrative you want to tell, and how much of it is sort of born out of painting and experimenting?

Caleb

I think it's a bit of both. This show I started working on in May of last year, and I didn't fully have a clear idea of what I wanted. I've always been a pretty voracious reader and always used fiction and the power of fiction as this jump off point of, like, how do I want to talk about something.

But for years I’ve made a lot of work about my family, their migration especially through Texas.

My dad's from Lubbock and my family lives in McAllen and Houston, and I'm from Colorado. I think similarly to your grandfather, my great grandfather was a horse Wrangler, and so I was, like, deeply obsessed with the preservation of, or the myth of one's own story.

When I started this exhibition, I was so obsessed with my family that my own kind of awareness or introspection became secondary. You know, I competed in boxing and jiu jitsu for the past 10 years–these very carnal, raw spaces–and the title of the show, A boy that don't bleed, is a line from a poem I wrote about boxing. I wanted to make an exhibition about a nameless boy through this kind of like, becoming, I'm sure yourself and other men in general have this kind of awakening that I think gets eclipsed by maybe a misunderstanding of juvenile behavior that may be aggressive, but I think is actually emotional and not given the right outlet to respond to this really complex change to your physiology, your life, and so I wanted to make an exhibition about that.

Yeah, that really comes through. I love the piece of the two versions of the boy wrestling with himself–this sort of physicality. You’re right, in Gimme Shelter, it’s the same sort of idea. You and I have both been unpacking or trying to understand where we fit into masculinity as a concept and how much of it is just a paper veil. I use the cowboy as a motif to sort create this image of the trappings of stoic, cold masculinity, which for a long time I didn't feel like I belonged to.

I think it’s really nice that we are having conversations about masculinity and manhood and what it means to be a part of it. A lot of my work has been about trying to approach it from a queer perspective. Like, where's the line between strength and tenderness, right? How do you embody both of those things? I think the expectation of stoicism, or maybe coldness and austerity has left a lot of people feeling lonely.

Caleb

Oh my god, yeah totally. That's one of the things I really loved about that painting–I don't know if it's a self portrait, but Gimme Shelter for me is this unadulterated joy and awareness of self that I think is maybe misunderstood or mislabeled?

I don’t know how you and your family are, but as I've gotten older, my dad is much more affectionate with me. He’ll kiss me and hug me, but as a kid, it was very machismo. I kind of had to be a cowboy, and I think I was really conflicted, and maybe you felt a similar way too. I kind of want to go back to what you said about finding your own masculinity, because I'm really curious what that means for you?

I've sort of always approached my practice not as a particularly queer figurative practice, but as just a personal narrative practice, and the queerness is just part of it. On the subject of trying to understand masculinity, I did have a similar upbringing, absolutely. The great thing about fathers as they get older is they tend to get softer, right? I was also really close to my grandfather.

Caleb

Same, yeah.

He was a cowboy, and he was really loving and gregarious to everyone except the men in his life. And I was always craving that. Honestly the painting The Fall is about that. One time, I was riding with him, and I fell off of a horse, and it was one of the only times he scooped me up and, like, really held me. There's something there about how the intensity or moments of pain are actually an entry point to the tenderness I’m sort of craving.

I think a lot of this body of work I just made is also about my marriage–I’ve been with my partners for 10 years–and trying to understand yourself as part of a partnership that's been going on for that long. I think it's possible to wake up one day and suddenly feel like a stranger all over again to everything in your life. Painting has always been how I try to find home in myself and how I play with all these relationships I have. In the Gimme Shelter painting, I'm wearing my grandfather's hat. In almost every show I've ever done, I've done a self portrait with grandfather's hat.

Caleb

I appreciate you sharing that. I always value knowing the objects that populate people's paintings as like their own relics, you know?

Yeah. Do you want to talk about the horse? I want to talk about your horse!

Caleb

Yeah, I’ll talk about my horses. I've painted horses for so long. Even before it was my full-time job. Just being from Colorado, as I'm sure, you being from Texas–it’s just language and a thing that’s just around you. Just my visual lexicon.

I've been sober for about nine years and when I first got sober, in my early 20s, man, I was really going through it, like a lot of men, I think, and people in general. I went and got a limpia [Mexican spiritual cleansing]. I went to a healer, and did this whole practice. It was a really insane experience. I started hallucinating and one of these images I saw was a bunch of white horses running through a blue field. She calls all of your ancestors into the room. It's like a deeply spiritual and kind of overwhelming thing. I went to Texas shortly after that and I just kept seeing these horses, and then I started talking to my family and started uncovering this myth of my family as horse thieves.

I've just always revisited the horse as this specter that has followed me along this Odyssey that is my life. And so the horse, this white thoroughbred in the exhibition, kind of functions as this specter that is following the boy. It's almost this thing that is telling him, maybe not literally where to go, but almost this spiritual message through God, like “you’re okay.” In the exhibition, they meet at this waterfall.

Great piece by the way. The sense of scale, man. Shit, that one knocked me to the ground.

Caleb

Thank you, I really appreciate that.

I like this idea of the horse, sort of bearing witness. There's something about, you know, when you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back. I do love this idea of these ‘familiars’ who are there just to bear witness to your journey.

Art

Paul McCarthy: Power in the Provocative

I do what I want—what I believe in. We’re living in a pretty extreme time, and when people say my work is getting more extreme, I think that just reflects the world around us. I’m simply moving with the current.

Born in Salt Lake City, Utah, McCarthy’s beginning in the art world stems from proximal radicalization. After moving from Salt Lake City to study in San Francisco, McCarthy's work as an artist has always embodied this radicalization. Street-wise, known for being one of the most

“dangerous” artists in Los Angeles, this exhibit encapsulates that at its forefront. The artworks present provocative, scattered drawings and paintings that promote freedom from systematic censorship in the exchange between creator and receiver. His art style is distinctive in its intention of visibility over technicality, as seen in his limited color palette and intentionally imperfect techniques, but radical imagery.

McCarthy speaks about his artistic process as though the outcomes are inevitable and incredibly natural to him, given the current state of the world. Living in times of constant uncertainty has blurred the lines of media censorship; almost everything we consume is shaped by it, raising questions such as: Why was this said? Why was this created? Who is this for? Paul McCarthy’s work deconstructs this. His drive to create authentically and follow what feels natural to him results in art that inhabits the visual extremes of human experience, with the spirit of contestation serving as an added layer to the experience.

Art

The Wedding Written In Stone

April 27, 2026

Sten Studio walks down the aisle to couple with Alcova for Milan Design Week. Set within an abandoned cathedral where vows once echoed, The Wedding is a sculptural installation hosting a symbolic marriage between feminine and masculine, soft and stone, fluidity and structure. Rocks are fossilized fusions of their own ancient surroundings, built from eons of crashing waves or explosive magma. Love is based on divine circumstances, built through trials and tribulations. Love is much like stone in the way it takes form through time and pressure, relying on the invisible higher powers forcing the gravity of unity. The Wedding reflects on this permanence. The space materializes elements that are usually fleeting - light, flowers, ceremonies, romance. Registry gifts include a custom carpet courtesy of Verdi, floral arrangements from Hamish Powell, and scents brewed by Penhaligon’s, all coming together to build the intimate world.

Photos Courtesy of Ramona Balaban

Sten Studio specializes in stones and crystals as decorative interiors, expanding on natural, Earthly beauty in man-made environments. Alcova temporarily transforms raw, abandoned, and unique urban spaces into immersive hubs of design, innovation, and heritage. The featured collection revitalizes the cathedral for a final reception celebrating life and all its momentary yet abundant bursts of joy.

Art

All Silk Roads Lead to Gucci

April 23, 2026

The silk road once dominated the Asia-pacific and cultivated economical prosperity with the purest textiles, a contrast to the modern, oversaturated market of cheap goods. Gucci has never been a cheap name, and their craftsmanship could be mistaken for that of another century. The Art of Silk, curated by Demna from the Gucci Archive in Florence, pays homage to the house’s journey with silk. Ten scarves reimagine archival designs of flora, animalia, and nautical prints - motifs of the primordial garden of Gucci. These limited-edition pieces were birthed in Calabria in collaboration with Nido di Seta and Ongetta. The fine Italian silk encapsulates more than Gucci’s reputation, but the tradition of mulberry cultivation. The project revives a once-thriving silk supply chain, recovering abandoned land, fostering employment in communities, supporting small farmers, and powered by renewable energy. It’s a production that innovates how tradition, community, and sustainability can stay preserved in the contemporary world.

In addition to this heritage preservation, the campaign represents Gucci’s contribution to the world of art and education. Two exclusive flora scarves were created for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, celebrating its opening of the new David Geffen Galleries. Available exclusively at the LACMA Store and the Gucci Beverly Hills flagship store, the designs pull inspiration from Vittorio Accornero’s 1966 illustrations. In partnership with the Accademia delle Belle Arti di Firenze, selected student paintings of each scarf will be displayed at the Gucci Rodeo Drive store in LA. Gucci supports these participating students through scholarships, reinforcing the house’s commitment to nurturing the next generation of creative talent. The Art of Silk bridges the old and new world, breathing life into past traditions and future endeavors.