Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Less is More... Noah Beil

Live long enough and one learns how life never lets up with ways to ridicule, taunt and basically lay waste to so much of what you hold dear as to ethics, values, questions of taste. Most recently I've been amazed how many times I don't want to have a woman's cleavage thrust in my face. In the street, the subway, the grocery store, even at work- please lady, put those things away! I don't want them spilling out all in front of me. Fact is, I'd much rather imagine them, and yours are not the ones I'd choose to imagine, let alone see.

A couple of years ago I saw a tape of a Sade concert, she was barefoot and swaying rhythmically to the music onstage. Sexy as all hell in a natural kinda way that your average pole dancing, video rock vixen could never ever imagine.

Obviously, what I'm trying to say is, that sometimes- less is more...

Noah Beil is a photographer based in neighboring Oakland, CA who has a rather intriguing set of landscapes. In one respect they are not that dissimilar to countless other "banal" color landscapes so prevalent to the contemporary art market for the past thirty years. His photographs however pique your visual attention with minimalist compositions that often challenge their relation to the rest of their environment in terms of both scale and function. Mr. Beil's straight on approach doesn't resort to odd angles or other photographic gimmickry to isolate the elements of his compositions, and it'll certainly be interesting to see how he applies his unique signature vision to other projects- though I sure wouldn't mind seeing more of these...
Update: More work just up!
(I've passed this scene many times and always knew there was a photograph there somewhere. Good to see somebody was able to make proper sense of it.)

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