Paul Noble
Film: Paul Noble in his studio
Four new prints entitled Rooms with Wallpaper by Paul Noble, who is known for his monumental drawing project depicting a fictional metropolis called Nobson Newtown. Click on each print below.
Rooms with Wallpaper relates directly to twelve drawings Noble has been making over the past two years. These meticulous etchings with aquatint are depictions of what the artist describes as 'sublime prisons', which show the possibility of freedom within containment. The images portray a section of a seemingly endless room with no doors or windows; no escape, which offer us a different relationship to space and being in space. They play with the idea of foreground and background while somehow resisting being perspectival. They almost verge on the abstract with their repetition of vertical lines of graduating tonality.
Noble describes the prints in relation to his Nobson Newtown drawing project, "These prints are images of interiors, but they are not the 'inside' of Nobson… (which I will now call THE OUTSIDE)….Both my OUTSIDE and INSIDE lack the POINT of perspective. There is no place to go to, just the PLACE. Perspective offers the idea of journey. From here to there. From A we will eventually arrive at B. We are passing through. This is the time we have. And afterwards we will be somewhere else, on another plain… The Renaissance shows the human on a journey from Here to the vanishing point, an eye of a needle, through which we will pass on to a celestial sphere. Take away the point and hierarchies collapse. Then, we co-exist in an occasionally apparent pattern. Like the rainbow. Everywhere and nowhere simultaneously. Which I hope brings me to this imagery. Grey Rainbows. …(These prints) are depictions of abstraction as wallpaper, itself abstracting the space it exists in. They are pictures of an experience AND an experience in itself."
Noble who was shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 2012 has recently had solo exhibitions at Gagosian, Geneva (2018); Musée des Beaux-Arts, La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland (2018); Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam (2014); Gagosian, Athens (2013) and Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle-upon-Tyne (2011). Noble has also shown in group exhibitions around the world including at Tate Britain, London; Henry Moore Foundation, Perry Green, England; Kunsthalle Münster, Germany; Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek, Denmark; Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, Netherlands; Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Museu de Arte de São Paulo; and Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey, Mexico.
Rooms with Wallpaper are available to buy individually or as a set.
Picture Gallery
Noble working on the plates at Huguenot Editions. Photos by Simon Lawson
