Rebecca III
Jamesha V
The Widening Gyre
As the technological systems of our collective creation tame and exert dominion over the natural world, so too do they inevitably crawl within the wilds of our nature. Forming plastic simulacrums, they destroy internal habitats with the same slow certainty with which they lay waste to natural ones.
Coal Power Plant at Dusk
The autarkic life of technological necessity, existing independent of any singular individual, and lacking embodiment, creates a strange tableau in which each individual finds themselves both predator and prey. This apparent contradiction manifests itself first when the necessities of our systems are internalized, and afterward when these values are inevitably reflected back upon us. While we often lack the power to directly confront these shadowy behemoths, we nevertheless retain the ability to tear up their roots and liberate the transgressions that dwell within.
Their Images Were Placed Among the Stars
Looking into the shimmering depths of the stars, I was struck by the thought of an endless fall into a nameless abyss. A torrent of fleeing light guarding the plunge into their gulf. After a thoughtless eternity of falling, what had once been a downward vector, removed of all cardinal way-points in that space of weightless openness, would transform at last into the velocity of flight.
Peace for the Drowned
The flattery of falling stars will be hushed in the cooling waters of quiet dusk.
Night
To know the truth of phenomenon is to have an incontrovertible certainty of their end. Measured out by time and physicality, only the nothingness itself remains untouched by its own eternal absence. Faced with such an assurance, we are left to reckon out our days with meaning; to face the coming Night with equanimity, anger, or reproach, and we may find with equal likelihood in its dusk freedom, beauty, or despair.
About Noah Alexander Isaac Stein:
Stein is visual artist and writer from Portland, Oregon. Known primarily for his ecstatic oil and wax compositions, the focus of Noah’s work is giving tangible voice to the shadows and light of the unnameable expanses where internal and external wilderness intersect.
Through the symbolical resonance of myth, the outpourings of trance states are given forms that act as way-posts for explorations of shared mental spaces that are, by their nature, ephemeral. The result is a process of delicate oil-painting combined with frenzied applications of translucent impasto that transform two-dimensional images into luminescent, semi-sculptural fever dreams. Visions of change, death, and transcendence are given life with a unity of opposites which underscores their implicit subjects.
As a further guide to these nebulous spaces of spirit, larger works are accompanied by written pieces which offer viewers an additional avenue of approach. The focus however is neither in explaining art, nor in illustrating ideas; it is in providing multiple pathways, that rather than overtake each other, should instead cascade, together, towards a singular destination.