JEFFREYNOBLE
WELCOME TO MARZ JUNE - AUGUST 2014
Jeffrey Noble fuses academic technique, larger than life story telling and sub cultural symbology. Taking form in large scale, these canvases challenge and infuse history painting with saturated images of a prophetic present.
Noble stakes out a sophisticated position within South Florida painting, this work enacts myth making from the periphery in a story from not so long ago, in a place not too far from here.
"Welcome to MarZ" is a series of paintings that takes flight from Florida's suburban space coast. For Noble, childhood regularly involved shuttle sittings. A burning plume climbs from the horizon, a spacecraft launches from Cape Canaveral puncturing the ozone, bound for the outer reaches of the known unknown - a striking vision of humanity's quest for greatness.
A pervasive black atmosphere defines the mood of the series. At once endless and flat, black both describes an imagination of outer space and a vast sub urban anonymity. Interior place collapses into an unbound exterior that reveals planets and stars bumping into speakers and mixing tables. Sand, oil and spray paint create a system that responds to cultural context and materiality.
Jeffrey Noble mines his life experience for images that interlace biblical narratives, sci-fi conspiracies, academic painting and Miami graffiti. The mix results in a contemporary spectacle of apocalyptic gestures, dancers side stepping towards the edge of a flat earth.
An expansive canvas announces "This is world destruction" in scorching letters that burn into a wooded mountain. A parade of friends flees the chaos, gripping onto emptying beer bottles as the earth seems headed for collapse.
There is something about Mary, 2014.
Oil, Sand and aerosol on canvas 62 x 46"
