Albert Baronian

David Noonan

06 Nov - 22 Dec 2008

© David Noonan
Exhibition view
DAVID NOONAN
(Project Room)

November 06, 2008 - December 22, 2008

David Noonan’s phantasmagorical images are like vivid dreams in which costumed characters enact bizarre rituals. When you awake the next day, the visions linger with you, while the meaning remains broodingly insistent but elusive. In one untitled image from 2007 several people in clown make-up lie side by side with their arms outstretched, an ornate pattern obscuring their faces. Noonan’s method of silk-screening a montage of black and white found photographs onto linen suggests documentation, but of unknown dramatic and staged events, as though he is in incessant pursuit of a secret history of the avant-garde. His performers’ coded gestures, often layered under stripes and patterns, suggest that if there was any such history, its meaning is lost for ever; Noonan refuses to mourn. (CF-W)

The text above is from the 2008 Frieze Yearbook

David Noonan has presented his work in solo exhibitions at Palais de Tokyo (2006), David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles (2006) ; HOTEL, London (2005) ; Foxy Production, New York (2004) ; or Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney (2002, 2003, 2005), and the Monash University Museum of Art in Melbourne presented David Noonan : Films and Paintings 2001-2005 in 2005. He has participated in group shows at Tate Modern, London (2006) ; PBICA, Palm Beach, FL (2005); The Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Tokyo (2004) ; Tate Britain, London (2003) ; Museo Nacional Centre de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid (2002) ; Istanbul Biennial (2001) ; and Witte de With, Rotterdam (1999), among others.
 

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