NYAB Event - Lindsey Nobel “A Mini Retrospective”

Lindsey Nobel “A Mini Retrospective”

Studio Vendome

This event has ended.

“I am obsessed with the invisible. I have developed a drawing language based on the otherwise invisible connections between humans and machines, effectively manifesting the immense grid of energy that now exists between human, machine and spiritual consciousness. Humans found, or perhaps even invented, that consciousness, and we are now mapping it with our newest technologies; technologies that weave us together and make the universe that much smaller – small enough to fit onto a painting or even a sheet of paper. I express this otherwise invisible language through mark-making, drawn and painted and even photographed and sculpted. Dots, lines, pods, licks of fire and drops of water transform into networks that I describe as “neurons” because they resemble the human nervous system. In fact they suggest that all of reality has a nervous system and our reality constitutes (some of) its synapses.”
– Lindsey Nobel

This exhibition brings together a body of work produced by artist Lindsey Nobel over the last 10 years. Created in studios on the East Coast in NYC and now fulltime back in her native West Coast LA, the paintings show a wide range of styles and media, but the concerns of the artist remain the same; consciousness and connectivity or the unifying forces behind everything. Whether they be neurons and synapses in the human brain or body, the copper connections on a microchip or the wiring in a machine, the veins which transport water to every surface on the leaf of a plant, or the filaments and explosions of color and matter that comprise the images of our evolving universe, Nobel’s work shows how animal, plant, machine and spirit make up the unity of The Whole.

Buddhist philosophy informs Nobel’s paintings too, offering an opportunity to slow down and contemplate, everything that exists just out of the limitations of physical sight. “It’s not about control it’s about life and how we have to keep flowing through all the chaos,” says the artist. “In these busy times we all need more meditation to stop and swim in the ocean to free ourselves from the man made grid of cellphones and the social network. Veil paintings are so the mind can relax and just appreciate color to see the layers.” The new veil paintings (poured oil paint on raw canvas) are influenced by the early color field painters Helen Frankenthaler and Morris Louis. Using thinned down oil paint she pours the liquid onto the raw canvases, each day a different color till the colors create a veil effect. Nobel wants the viewer to see the layers of time and small details of the edges where color meets color.