Paul Noble takes us on a flight over the imaginative scape of Nobson in the current Gagosian Gallery show. On entrance, W-E-L-C-O-M-E-T-O-N-O-B-S-O-N (2010) literally spells out what we are in for. It gives us at once an entry point to Noble’s illusory, geek-chic world and to a 15-year artistic project, to which he says, this is his penultimate visit. Noble frames this carefully executed pencil study with lines from Genesis – in the beginning was the word, and so on – leaving the viewer to frame the rest of the exhibition with the same and to ponder the omniscient role of the artist in a world of his own creation.
The Beaded Curtain (2011), an arrangement of suspended monochrome cubes and spheres, gives way to a view of the pivotal work: Welcome to Nobson (2008-10). Taking 20 paper panels, and two years to complete, the scale of this pencil drawing is surprising. Covering more than 28 square metres, this work is a huge wall covering, as detailed and oversized as Gothic-Renaissance tapestry. Then, the weaver was all-powerful. Here, Noble is. He explores every inch of this cryptic world. In the centre, in the middle of a pseudo-sacred concrete pasture, an indecipherable totemic tower stands tall. Clumpy piled structures and synthetic, sappy trees are plotted elsewhere. Should you look for them, for the scale requires some traversing of the gallery space, there are some references that bounce back and forth between this and the other works on display. The large, angled slide structures of A+B=C (2009) reappear to the left of the totem in its enclosure; Noble brings us close to a complete view of his world, at once familiar and unrecognisable in the white gallery space.
Envisionings of Hell (2009) and Heaven (2009) populate the view to the left in the main gallery space. Noble’s use of graphite line introduces or recalls the gated structures that we see elsewhere, not least in the largest work. Here, Noble leaves them empty; the viewer repeats ‘He separated the light from the darkness’. The expanses of white ground seem to form a counterpoint to the darker, pencil musings on language, ritual and religion on the, albeit unrecognisable, terra-firma of Nobson.
In this exhibition, Noble’s brave new world is most succinctly expressed in Public Toilet (1999). This is a drawing that tells us something, quite literally because the buildings are, again, letter-shaped. P-U-B-L-I-C-T-O-I-L-E-T it reads; in the beginning was the word. Packed with more urinals, showers, sinks and taps than could feasibly be needed, the communal facilities remain entirely unoccupied of beings. There are familiar signs of habitation, a toilet roll here, a tied bin-bag there; soured by the drip, drip realisation that big brother is always watching, in this case through the two-eyed spy camera at the top left. Nearby, a plastic chair of the type that fills church halls and schools has lost its function, trapped, like a museum object, under a bell-jar.
In the second, smaller gallery space, the material and form of Wooden Bell (2011) prove that an interesting departure is afoot. Reminiscent of seventeenth century micro-carvings that you might see preserved in the Grünes Gewölbe in Dresden, Noble has scratched representations of hands onto the husk of the hazelnuts he employs as his material. It seems that Noble, or at least his hands, are omnipresent here too.
At the centre of this exhibition remains a highly original exploration of a created, concrete, surrealist city that is about a future and a past, logic and illogic, control and drift, religious ritual and sterile isolation. It is about a world that is at once recognisable and alien, at its beginning or end. It is a construct, for the control of its elusive inhabitants, as well as of Noble’s mind. The viewer is meant to be rooted and swayed by Nobson. And, in the pale light of the Gagosian, Noble S-P-E-L-L-S-I-T-O-U-T-F-O-R-U-S.
Paul Noble: Welcome to Nobson, Gagosian Gallery, WC1X 9JD, until 17th December
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