Lindsey Nobel Gives us the Insight on her Art

By Reed Watson

National University Student Journalist

Lindsey Nobel gives us the Insight on her Art

Last week Lindsey Nobel held a semi private speech about three separate pieces of her artwork at White Box Contemporary in downtown San Diego. Nobel’s art is aimed around showing the invisible connections between humans and machines. The three pieces, which she talked about, were Liquid Lines, Overview, and Neuron Paintings.

Nobel says, “I express this otherwise invisible language through mark-making, drawn and painted and even photographed and sculpted. Dots, lines, pods, licks of fire and drops of water transform into networks that I describe as “neurons,” because they resemble the human nervous system. In fact, they suggest that all of reality has a nervous system, and our reality constitutes its synapses.”

Liquid Lines is about the invisible consciousness that is happening throughout the world. It’s us thinking about something then it happens. Such as thinking of someone calling and they do or you fill up your car and then get back on the driving grid. The art flows like consciousness with the shapes and lines moving when the light hits them. She says the light shifting the whites, shades and textures gives off an invisible website feel. Nobel says, “It’s like planes and cars moving around us like internet messages.

Overview is pretty much the opposite of Liquid Lines with the use of a repetitive pen and many tight lines on the grid. The abstract forms represent people and buildings on top of a colorful background on the grid. Nobel says, “The acrylic drawing, white line ink drawing and the resin on top make a reflective surface which allows you to see yourself in the grid, yet still being on the outside. Overview gets people to understand what it is to look at a screen all day and then to step away and look at these lines, connections and thought processes. When you’re on the screen and you turn it off you will see these paintings and actions below you.”

Neuron Paintings is still a work in progress that Nobel begun creating in the year 2000. They are made using the concept of sculpture, painting, drawing and photography all on the surface. She made a sculpture out of plastic to represent brain cells. “People think they look like dendrites,” Nobel says. Nobel feels that when you’re not with people you can’t completely visualize what they are. In the Neuron Paintings you have this neuron that acts as an idea of the person. She puts these sculptures in different colored liquids, and then after she takes a photograph she then puts it on a piece of wood and paints black around it followed with drawings. Then she straps the neuron to the grid, which acts like the idea of a brain being strapped to people, ideas and computers. Nobel says, “These paintings were made during the start of the Internet, before instant messaging and before Face book. The Neuron Paintings represent the Internet connection that we have with the world today.”

People can learn more about Lindsey Nobel or see more of her art at www.lindseynobel.com or www.whiteboxcontemporary.com.

Nobel leaves us with one last quote; “The world will change and people’s governments are going to be run by the people on the computer, because we can all be together if there’s a problem. The people will know about the problem and can fix it. So hopefully it works out.”

Two of Lindsey Nobel’s Liquid Lines works of art. Courtesy of White Box Contemporary.