This island shares many commonalities with the city of La Cheaux-de-Funds: a certain isolation, the taste for right angles, modernist architectures and strange public sculptures.
The exhibition was conceived with the artist in resonance with the place that hosts it. Gathering works from the last ten years allows you to discover new directions in the work of Noble. In addition to the monumental drawings that have earned him important recognition, his practice also takes on a sculptural and installation dimension.
After meticulously describing the surroundings of his city, it is as if the artist were entering a house inhabited by preconscious memories. New motifs appear: the irruption of a leg, gigantic and incongruous like a surrealist divinity; the mystery of the doors, closed on enigmatic visions; the emphasis on time that is.
At 10am, time is a fixed and unchanging point of reference in Nobson Newtown, which takes on special significance in the watchmaking city. This focus on the interiority of this mental island is accompanied by a reflection on the transformations of scale. From tiny to gigantic, the scales are pushed like the levels of reality. New Gulliver, the visitor also finds himself giant and then Lilliputien moving from one work to another.
Paul Noble was born in 1963 in Northumberland. He lives and works in London and is represented by the Gagosian Gallery.
4 November 2018 – 3 February 2019
Musée des Beaux-Arts, La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland
Image: Paul Noble, Landscape with Wand, 2016 © Paul Noble
