I’m excited to announce the opening of my new solo exhibition The Wild Dark. Featuring eight new major paintings, including my largest work to date, the show can be seen through December at Blackfish Gallery, with the opening reception on 12/3/26, from 5 – 8 PM.
The Wild Dark
Exploring the intersection of spiritual understanding with the undercurrents of an increasingly turbulent present, Noah Alexander Isaac Stein’s new exhibition asks how darkness can be integrated. Through oil paintings that straddle the divide between abstraction and representation, The Wild Dark uses the tension imposed by political and environmental discord as a catalyst to pursue transcendence.
Following Stein’s Luminous Fire from a Broken Machine (2025), and Out of Tension, Light! (2024), The Wild Dark is simultaneously a smoldering continuation of these themes, and a radical break. Turning from examinations of internal to external discord, Stein syncretically combines contemporary and traditional frameworks to deconstruct and revitalize their sources of truth. Rather than didactic explanation however, Stein’s dynamic movements of pigment, texture, and expression are intended to guide viewers towards their own encounters with ineffable oneness.
That these experiences are built out of the worldly subject matter of human catastrophe is simultaneously a challenge to viewers, and Stein’s overarching proposition. If the coexistence that The Wild Dark offers is difficult, it is because its complexity reflects the world we live in. Likewise, if it succeeds in transcendence, it suggests that the darkness of the world might similarly be tinder for transformation.
Exhibition Dates: 12/2/2026 – 1/2/2027
Opening Reception: 12/3/2026, 5 pm – 8 pm
938 NW Everett St, Portland, OR 97209