Recent Work
Journey/Ascent, 2026
Oil and wax on canvas
18′′ x 14”
News
Upcoming Show: In the Heat of Becoming
I’m excited that I’ve been invited to include my piece Night in the upcoming exhibition In the Heat of Becoming, at Collective Z, at 325 Broome Street, New York. The opening reception will be from 6-9 pm on 3/19/26.
NEW YORK — Collective Z is pleased to announce In the Heat of Becoming, a group exhibition bringing together twenty artists whose work grapples with states of flux, emergence, and unresolved transformation. On view March 18 through April 11, 2026, with an opening reception on Thursday, March 19 from 6 to 9 PM, the exhibition marks a significant milestone for Collective Z as its inaugural group exhibition.
The title draws from the language of becoming — a word that holds motion, ambiguity, and possibility inside it. Not arrival, but process. Not the finished state, but the heat of getting there. Across painting, sculpture, drawing, and photography, the twenty artists in this exhibition approach transformation from radically different vantage points: the cellular and the geological, the personal and the political, the material and the psychological. What binds them is a refusal to settle — an insistence on form as something alive and still changing.
The exhibition presents new and recent work by Aleksandra Scepanovic, Betsy Jacks, Bill Buchman, Carin Kulb Dangot, Elizabeth Johnson, Heather Abshire, Jason Fondren, Jessica Tobin, Katsura Okada, Lisa Lee Freeman, Lucianna Ania, Maki Hajikano, Marieken Cochius, Marina Chistyakova, Megan Reilly, Noah Alexander Isaac Stein, Patti Jordan, Sandra Cavanagh, Sara C. Sun, and Svetlana Askenazy.
Collective Z was founded in January 2026 as a Lower East Side gallery committed to presenting work that operates at the intersection of urgency and craft — art that takes risks both formally and conceptually. In the Heat of Becoming embodies this mission, assembling a constellation of voices that individually and collectively resist easy resolution.
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.
About
Statement
Examining the intersections of spiritual experience and catastrophe, both at collective and personal levels, my art seeks out the potential for transcendence in tension. As my subject matter shifts between extant environmental and social issues, and syncretic overlaps of religious and mythological archetypes, the emergence of transcendent experience forms a consistent theme.
In my work this aspect of human experience is treated both as a recurrent motif, and more centrally as an intrinsic property of process. Using the inherent tensions in my subjects as provocation, oil and cold wax mediums, as well as discarded plastic and LED lights, are used as expressive catalysts for states of trance and ecstatic release. Resulting works are intended as a synthesis of internal experience and external expression, where traces of process, including brushwork, scrapes, and gauges form essential compositional elements. Left unaltered, in finished painting these traces are intended to provide viewers access to the undifferentiated states they describe.
Reflecting the multi-faceted complexity of our responses to adversity, my work is intended to equally address and move beyond suffering. Through fracturing the illusion of separation, it seeks to build a singular transformative experience shared by both artist and viewer. Through this interconnection I believe we may discover an underlying universal unity which precludes destruction.
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.