Rising Muse, 2025
Oil and wax on panel
20′′ x 40′
News
Upcoming Show: Synthetic Accretion
I’m excited to announce my new exhibition Synthetic Accretion. Synthetic Accretion will be a site—specific installation at Blackfish Gallery, and run from 09.03.25 – 09.27.25. Come by for the First Thursday opening on September 5!
In the synthetic transcendence of new materials, we have created substances which defy both the limits and safeguards of ecological necessity. Just as plastic once freed humanity from the restraints of chemical bonds, now synthetic culture offers us freedom from the human spirit.
In his new installation, Synthetic Accretion, Noah Alexander Isaac Stein, explores AI and plastic as parallel components of an emergent synthetic human experience. Through recovered transparent plastic waste, and shifting multicolored light, Stein mirrors the disorientation and ambient technological allure of contemporary cultural networks.
If the accumulation of microplastics in the human blood stream are a physical manifestation of synthetic process, Stein invites us to consider the immaterial synthetic as a corollary in the dream-oceans of our collective unconscious.
Art Media Agency Feature Article
Art Media Agency’s excellent new article about Portland quotes me and features a full page image of my painting Jupiter and Semele. You can download AMA 373 here, or read the text only version here.
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.
About
Statement
The central goal of my work is to provoke, through the process of painting, direct encounters with the underlying reality beyond the self. This reality exists without obligation to the limitations of the human mind, which mundanely perceives the shadows of its own fears and desires in place of the world. To perceive the ineffable vastness that exists beyond the mind thus requires the death of internal constructions of the self. This experience is one of indescribable ecstasy and beauty, where a light greater then is capable of being contained within the individual mind reveals itself like thunder.
During the creation of my art, painting is used as a catalyst and intermediary for this process, which attempts to communicate transcendent experience through both subject and the physicalIty of the medium itself. While painting, working mediums of oil and cold wax are intentionally pushed into novel and difficult interactions that resist conscious control. This loss of control acts as a liminal expression of an accompanying psychological upheaval, which pursues points of tension until both internal and external forms merge and are simultaneously resolved in ecstatic experience.
It is my hope these paintings can act as bridge, and through the fiery residue of their creation a path can be discerned in the mind of the viewer. To this end, traces of the process are intentionally left unaltered in the forms of scrapes, gauges, and heavy impasto. If the viewer feels discomfort in these paintings, they perceive the instant of inspiration. This dissonance is the tension between a human mind that perceives suffering, destruction, and death, and a greater reality in which all phenomena shine as manifestations of indescribable perfection in the ineffable oneness of light.
Bio
Noah Alexander Isaac Stein is a self-taught artist living and working in Portland, OR. Focused on ecstatic oil paintings and large scale light-based installations, Stein’s work explores themes of spiritual transcendence, political discord, and environmental collapse.
For Stein, ecstatic experience represents both an underlying truth and the means to move beyond suffering. To communicate this to viewers, Stein explores both contemporary and traditional frameworks for their potential to provoke insight that leads to direct experience.
Shaped both by his multi-faith and bi-ethnic background, and his experiences living, working, and traveling throughout the world, for Stein all understanding draws from a common well. A current member of Blackfish Gallery, Stein is also a founding member of international peacemaking group Art Knows No Borders, and a voice for Portland artists as the president and founder of First Friday PDX.