Noah Alexander Isaac Stein: Welcome!

March 17, 2025March 17, 2025

Upcoming April Solo Show

I’m excited to announce my upcoming solo exhibition at Blackfish Gallery! I’ve been busy working on several new large scale works for the show that I will be exhibiting for the first time, along with a collection of work from the last few years. Many of these pieces are being shown for the first time.

The show will be on display from April 2 -26 at Blackfish Gallery, 938 NW Everett St., Portland OR.
The opening reception will be on April 3 from 5 – 8 PM
I’ll be having an artist talk on Sunday, April 13 at 2 PM

From the press release:

In this new body of work Noah Alexander Isaac Stein explores dualities of interconnection and numinous experience through the lens of mind attempting to move beyond itself. With fire as a metaphor for the transformative act that simultaneously consumes and creates, A Luminous Fire from a Broken Machine approaches the potential for transcendent experience as a resolution to suffering.

Stein’s work frequently focuses on expressive painting, where interactions of oil and cold wax are used as a catalyst for spiritual epiphany, Noah’s art seeks to provide universal connection point between the artist and audience.

As a part of the exhibition, Stein’s art will be accompanied by a series of his written works which building of his synthesis of expressive and conceptual approaches.

February 1, 2025March 28, 2025

Portland Winter Light Festival 2025

I’m excited to have three installations featured in the 10th annual light festival, which runs from Feb 7 – 15.

Garden at the End of the Anthropocene imagines the growth of a new ecosystem; forgotten technology of the future melding together with unfathomable new forms of biology among the refuse of civilization. Reminiscent of both a techno-vision dream and bioluminescent fungal growth, the installation will speak to both the fate of the of human synthetic detritus, and the resilience of the natural world. Viewable at Ambient Magic Studios.

Behold the Man; at the Threshold of the Future is viewable as part of the Labyrinth of Light at East Creative Collective: “Perched between the future and the past, we stand at the threshold of possibility. We are half animal, still torn by the same desires, fears, and tribalism as our cousins and ancestors. We are half machine, forms bound to technology, and minds inexorably interlinked through code and algorithms, forebears of our future children. We aspire to be gods, ascendent over nature; we are polluted, body, soul, and mind with the plastic sparks of synthesis.”

Aurora is an in-gallery exhibition at Blackfish Gallery that draws inspiration from arctic cycles to explore light as conceptual force of meaning. Accompanying the installation is an original ambient soundscape composed by Jason Kowalski.

October 10, 2024

Drinking from the Water, Ascending into Fire, 2024

From Jung to the Abzu of ancient Sumerian myth, the watery depths are a constantly reemergent symbol for the buried psyche. A place of great danger as well as shinning treasure, it is only through a clear perception of the unconscious that the soul can break free of conditioned response and experience the ecstatic unity that is sometimes termed the divine.

What is hidden remains inexorably part of the self, and to deny it is to close in the concept of self, building barriers until the fiery light that permeates all existence becomes a tiny candle surrounded by a sea of darkness. No matter how tightly this blanket of darkness is wrapped however, nothing exists in isolation. Rather than protect the fragile ego, the severing of undesired aspects from the concept of self creates a sea of monsters; no longer part of a complete whole, the mind perceive in its own shadows independence.

In contrast, to accept hidden aspects of self is to transform the very darkness that is feared into the essence of light, which is knowledge. Once the self has achieved this wholeness, the process of incorporation may be continued, extending equally into the external world, of which the individual is an invisible a part as the unconscious is of the self. Although the individual mind is the seat of this experience, this does not contain the boundless expanse of existence inside the ego. In the light of totality, the illusion of ego is finally extinguished, and reality is at last perceived in undifferentiated glory beyond the mere human.

October 10, 2024October 10, 2024

Leviathan

It is a strange paradox that out of the collective can emerge a singular intent of direction that is against each individual constituent will. Emergent behavior like a shadowy behemoth, takes its dim form at the peripheries of our consciousness, even as its winding intricacies form an inescapable center. This paradox is at the heart of the Anthropocene. The leviathan of human progress carries us onward to an uncertain light, and we are the helpless links of its great sinews.

October 10, 2024October 10, 2024

Axis Mundi of the Flesh

Found cross-culturally, the concept of axis mundi must be understood as an intersection of both physical and psychological geography. Emerging through a variety of symbols, ranging from the cosmic world tree, to the sacred mountain, the essential element is a linkage between worlds. In the symbolic language of the soul, the roots and branches of the tree, extending from below the earth, through the trunk, into the latitudes of sky, connects these disparate elements just as the human mind links the subconscious strata of the collective animal with the divine unity of transcendent experience.

February 8, 2024February 8, 2024

PDXWLF 2024 Installation

I’m excited to announce I am part of the 2024 Portland Winter Light Festival, with a new installation at Blackfish Gallery. The PDXWLF is amazing city-wide event, and I am please to join it once again, with a new monumental installation; Leviathan/Ouroboros.

Constructed out of a skin of recovered fishing nets and filled with local plastic trash, the installation Leviathan / Ouroboros imagines the incarnation of the Anthropocene as a self-consuming serpent.

Designed to capture the paradox of emergent behavior in a collective system spiraling heedlessly towards its own catastrophic unraveling, Leviathan / Ouroboros provides viewers with a tangible connection to abstractions of environmental collapse and spiritual isolation. The machinations of human progress carries us onward to an uncertain light, and we are the helpless links of its great sinews and the prey of its winding intricacies.

Come see it at Blackfish Gallery from February 1st – March 2nd, with extended nighttime hours from 6 PM – 10 PM on February 2nd, 3rd, 9th and 10th.

See more about it here!

January 4, 2024

Opening Tomorrow at Blackfish Gallery

December 8, 2023January 4, 2024

Out of Tension, Fire and Light

October 23, 2023

Joining Blackfish Gallery

I’m excited to announce that I’ve been invited to join Blackfish Gallery as a member-owner. Blackfish is among the oldest continually operating collective art galleries in America, and has been a cornerstone of the Portland art scene for over 45 years. It’s been great to connect already with so many amazing artists, and I’m looking forward to my first show there in January 2024.

June 8, 2023June 8, 2023

Tanngrisnir’s Bones

Like many points of modern departure the Portland airport is clean and sterile. After weeks of chaotic movements and unstable sleep, there is at last a sense of calm in the orderly collapse of the possible trajectories into the certain path of the jetway. In another time I might have felt a deep discomfort in the sterile efficiency of these surroundings. If such feelings begin to emerge now, they are quickly stymied by the chaotic tumult of the Air Condor ticketing counter and the sweating disorder of the human throng.

This is the third ticket I have purchased. Val and I have formed the sketch of a plan during her last visit; we will ride a motorcycle along the Mediterranean, through Eastern Europe, into Turkey, and following the invisible winds of instinct, at last into an abstract beyond. After a month of planning however, we are left with few plans.

As we have navigated the corridors of this new beginning there have been intricate suggestions by fate, both the subtleness of an inexplicable nose bleed of a driver, and the brutal overtness of the impact into the rear pannier of the vstrom 650 we had planned to ship from Vancouver to Rome.

Retuning from my studio a week before our scheduled departure, I am thrown into the air. There is little warning, only the sudden jolt and a brief flicker of realization. As I lay on the ground listening to the sickening crunch of metal, plastic, and glass, I notice that my torso is perfectly aligned with the wheel of the oncoming car. There is a stillness and the moment of uncertainty ends as the driver comes to a halt.

I seem uninjured, and there is even a moment of comedy. As I try to pick the heavy motorcycle up, still unsteady, I teeter on the brink, one foot in the air and the risen motorcycle is poised to fall now on the other side. A nearby bystander however grabs my upturned heel, and together we navigate back to earth.

A great misfortune? I am completely uninjured, and I have received news on my way to the airport, on a new flight to Frankfurt, that I will receive an generous payout from the driver’s insurance. Walking through the airport I look out on the distant mountains, gleaming in the sunny, and regard the polite, kind people of my city with the sudden eyes of an outsider. Confronted by the certain hubris of all plans in the face destiny, there can ultimately be only a surrender into the currents of the journey to come.

April 7, 2023April 9, 2023

New paintings and shows

Just finished up a few new pieces, including the long in progress work Nightfall at Justice Center, another in my Kabbalah series, and a small one featuring raven:

Im also very excited to be part of shows with Astoria Visual Arts and Art at the Cave: