~NOAH LYON / MATT LEINES / LITTLE BOOK / BIG WORLD
“little creative acts add up. little creative acts can be very revealing. little books can tell big stories.”
see the whole story here:
http://www.artloversnewyork.com/zine/the-bomb/2009/12/10/noah-lyonlittle-book/
With a fantastic imagination à la Bosch Lyon gets his nourishment from popular culture, news flow, contemporary society, international politics and doomsday prophecies.
Noah Lyon ”Look at All Your Stuff”
Galleri Thomas Wallner, Malmö, Sweden
through May 27
Noah Lyon’s drawings are like graffiti-covered walls. Bright colors call you in to take a closer look; in the multitudes I’m drawn to “All Your Stuff”. A man, or is it a bird, in a wheelchair is chewing, like Moloch, on a naked figure, who is expelling gas in anticipation of death, while another guy without a head slinking away with a turd on his shoulders. Some poor wretch is flushed down the toilet, and a miserable bastard, trapped in an orange bag, is vomiting from his torture. The colors of U.S.A. are shining through like a dirty rainbow. The doomsday horn is blowing.
Figure is added to figure, scene added to scene, one image next to another, in a color scale that would do credit to any Concretist. With a fantastic imagination à la Bosch Lyon gets his nourishment from popular culture, news flow, contemporary society, international politics and doomsday prophecies. Full to the brim. It is important to say everything, all at once. Then he can leave the words and thoughts to the beholder. Implicitly he is offering his world, what does yours look like? ”Look at All Your Stuff” is the name of the exhibition!
The pressure in Lyon’s imagery is kept high by the small format. Sometimes down to mini size. Then they are small picture buttons that are also put together into “button paintings”. The effect is stroboscopic; quick punch lines about his world.
Alongside the image fury Lyon shows more conventional paintings. Loaded with air, light and dreams of a sort of American mythology. The painting “Pyramid Me” is just a small picture of a man in a cowboy hat in front of a wall that has been sewn together; the seam resembles a pole with a small owl. Within, I hear Hank Williams’ tragic dreams and painfully beautiful music!
Lyon’s images collide in a way that would have put André Breton in ecstasy.
- Thomas Millroth, art critic – Sydsvenskan April 30, 2009
Kollisionskalas – Noah Lyon review by Thomas Millroth – Sydsvenskan April 30, 2009
V1 Gallery in Copenhagen has a book out documenting the exhibitions they’ve had over the last 5 years. They’ve shown artwork by Noah Lyon, David Shrigley, Jenny Holzer, Martin Kellerman, Joe Bradley, Dearraindrop, Dash Snow, Slava Mogutin,Todd James, Stephen Powers, Shepard Fairey, Kaws, Banksy, Daniel Johnston, Chris Johanson, Misaki Kawai, Taylor McKibbens, Marc Bell, CF, Neckface, KR, Cody Hudson, Ed Templeton, Jo Jackson, Rich Jacobs, Isaac Lin, Andrew Jeffery Wright and many others.
read it here…
Spraygraphic Interview with Noah Lyon
SG: Please tell us about yourself?
NL: Let me answer that question by answering the next 14 questions.
SG: Where do you currently live and work?
NL: New York City
SG: What mediums do you work with?
NL: I’ll take a medium and take it to the extreme. So it would be way more than medium, more like maximum. Maximum rock’n’roll. Maximum markers. I use paper too. But maximum doesn’t always mean the biggest it also could be, like, the smallest. So I’ll take a 1”x 1” piece of paper and make the most incredible drawing ever, nowhere near medium, if it were a pepper it would be the most hot and if it were Bob Marley it would be the most high. One-inch drawings turn into one-inch buttons & I’ll make the most of that too. Like make the maximum amount of buttons. I think 50,000 might be the max. Anyways that’s where I’m at right now. Way beyond medium. Push it to the limit, walk along the razor’s edge. I’ll make a painting with no paint. Is that medium or minimum? I try to work as little as possible. Minimum work, maximum results, any medium, bring it on. (more…)
see one up close here http://retardriot.com/store/
“Noah Lyon’s art (Retard Riot) has always been surprising, and that’s no easy feat after more than a hundred years of modernism doing cartwheels and somersaults for our attention. Lyon has always worked differently from anyone else around, and the results were never predictable even within his own process. His art has also always been very much of the artist’s own world, that is, very much alive and screaming inside the larger, dry and dysfunctional authoritarian husk which encloses all of our worlds; it remains what people who maintain they can compartmentalize their experience call “political”, or “too political”. ” – James Wagner
read the whole article at http://jameswagner.com/2007/02/noah_lyon_at_ho_1.html
New York Times’ Roberta Smith recommends drawings and buttons by Noah Lyon in her review of the Infinite Fill show. See more reviews and pics here http://www.retardriot.com/shows/2004/07/22/beige-presents-the-infinite-fill-group-show-curated-by-jamie-and-cory-arcangel/
