Statement
Focusing on extant social, environmental, and technological tensions, my art seeks to explore the potential for transcendent experience as a response to catastrophe. Syncretically drawing from mythical, religious, and psychological motifs, for me transcendence is both subject, and an intrinsic part of my practice. Using tensions inherent in my subjects as provocation, during painting oil and cold wax mediums are used as a catalyst for a loss of control which is resolved through spiritual experience. Resulting works are intended as a synthesis of internal experience and external expression, where traces of process, including brushwork, scrapes, and gauges are left unaltered. Forming essential compositional elements, these traces are intended to provide viewers potential access to the experiences they describe. Reflecting the multi-faceted complexity of our responses to adversity, my work is intended to equally address and move beyond its subject matter, finding in specific occurrences universal phenomenon, in which viewer and artist share in a singular, all permeating, awareness.
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.