John Noestheden

Articles

John Noestheden works on paper
By: Ihor Holubizky

Part 1: What They Are and What They’re Not.

John Noestheden has titled recent bodies of work Milky Way Mirrors and Star Drawings. They are neither literally mirrors or drawings, nor are they the Milky Way or Stars “as we know it and them.” He has applied the term “diamond drawings” to earlier series of works that have comparable composition and subject matter concerns. But what Noestheden has adhered to the surface of paper are not diamonds, and we know them. They are in fact, Swarovski Elements, a manufactured crystal. Yet the idea of using a manufactured/constructing thing, rather than a natural thing – a diamond – to look into the cosmos speaks to our curiosity and inventiveness. Meaning, how much can we know from our position on earth? The cosmos is as much a construction of humankind as the idea of landscape.

Paper, which seems to be an incongruous surface for the application of crystals, has a critical place in Noestheden’s training and practice, and as he noted, “is a printmaker’s residue from my work in the 1970s. I have respect for the beauty and integrity of a full sheet of great, handmade paper.” By the same token, not all artists who draw have the same “respect” – some fear its new pristine quality and there are volumes of drawings over the past 150 years that have been done on whatever support material and medium was at hand, whenever a thought arises – an immediate response and notational approach. However, as Noestheden also noted, there is a social-historical aspect to his use of paper, and in turn, a conscious and deliberate instability: “Documents have a sense of reality and authority, whereas the ‘information’ in my work is filtered and mediated. Therefore they have a different kind of authority – it is less empirical – a more tentative feel for me, and more likely to be changeable.”

Paper is, as well, historically and typically, the “locus” for the marking of the hand and mind. So regardless of the “medium,” Noestheden’s works can be viewed as the actualisation of accumulative thoughts and actions; his drawing as mark-making in printwork, on paper, canvas and metal surfaces, and installations. With a few exceptions, these are marks that express “being” rather than serving to represent things. In turn – to tease out my title – the diamonds work – do work/produce results – on paper. They are “documents of being,” but I’ve just slipped into part 2.

Part 2: What They Tell Us, and What They Can’t.

Noestheden has given the “Milky Way Mirror” title to works with the most dense crystal passages, and modeled after the Hubble Space Telescope images of the densest sections of our galaxy. The Hubble operates with two hyperbolic mirrors, hence the “mirror” in the title, and as Noestheden noted, “all the varieties are directly informed by diagrams and photos of the universe.” Within the basic, essential elements he has “allowed” himself, there is a rich and complex range of thoughts, because this interest in the universe/the cosmos, the unknown and its social history and history of wonderment (and foreboding), chaos theory, etc., has broad philosophical dimensions; both of knowledge and the sense of being. At the same time, Noestheden actualization has a realistic (or pragmatic) aspect. The crystal is still a crystal and stars are luminous orbs of plasma held together by gravity. In this, and other ways, as he stated, “the works question or interrogate the reliability of scientific information,” and the placement of the crystals is determined by the rules he makes as an artist.

Noestheden, however, is not indifferent to science and data. Rather, the interpretation is left to us. Indeed, this is a debating point in science itself, as Sir James Jeans wrote in a formative book on astronomy – aptly titled The Mysterious Universe – in 1931: “I think the best way of regarding the ether [the undulated, unseeable forces of the universe] is as a frame of reference.” But this is what artists can do – they deliver us the unseen without needing diagnostic proof. To amplify this state of knowing and “not knowing,” Noestheden declared that he considers both the “Milky Way Mirror” and “Star” works in two ways; “each is a magnificent lie about the cosmos, and each is a Hallelujah chorus.”

Time is another fact and factor, and an inherent element in viewing the universe because what we see is old light, even if we think of “the night sky” as eternal. The experiential aspect to Noestheden’s work, likewise, is ever-changing, and in many respects is impossible to fully document or describe. He wrote, “even the slightest amount of light in a darkened space will activate (it),” and as we (invariably) move through our space (a domestic space, a gallery), the light information will alter –play across the surface in a dramatic way – a moment of wonder. And as Jeans noted in his conclusion, “perhaps [the glimmer of light] is wholly illusory, for certainly we have to strain our eyes very hard to see anything at all [and perhaps] science should leave off making pronouncements: the river of knowledge has too often turned back on itself.”

Ihor Holubizky, 2009



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