Noah Becker: Fun Drugs at Amy Li Projects
Noah Becker
Photo by Zach Gross
I’m looking forward to the opening of Noah Becker’s exhibition, Fun Drugs at Amy Li Projects. I have yet to experience the alternative gallery space that doubles as a button shop. Becker’s large-scale paintings juxtapose pop culture images from the past with currently relevant text. The show promises to be aesthetically pleasing and thought provoking.
The painting Fun Drugs shows multiple images of Big Bird, invoking a humorous response in the viewer as long as one doesn’t think about what happens when the fun ends.
Noah Becker
Fun Drugs
2016
Oil on canvas
45 x 38 inches
In Great Again the Trump slogan text with the poetic rendering of characters from the film, Children of the Damned lays bare the horrific immediacy of the current election cycle.
Noah Becker
Great Again
2016
Oil on canvas
45 x 38 inches
As a Hollywood native, I must chuckle at the multiple portraits in Batman. It needs no more words. Just pick your favorite and mourn the ones who tried and failed.
Noah Becker
Batman
2016
Oil on canvas
45 x 38 inches
I had the opportunity to chat with Noah about his upcoming show:
Arcade Project: How do you find balance between running Whitehot Magazine and your artistic practice?
Noah Becker: A team of hundreds works at the magazine in different ways since I started it in 2005. But I had lots of help along the way and now have partners in the publication. This help gives me time to run the painting studio, make new shows and also work with the magazine. Originally it was the Warholian model of Andy Warhol’s INTERVIEW and his paintings, you know – the artist/publisher? That’s very common. Also I’m not the only artist who publishes things. Go to Printed Matter and look or any book fair, artists are publishing more than ever.
AP: Who are your artistic influences?
NB: I like non-painterly things like literature and film. I’m saying that it’s more interesting to make non-art history based painting. Painting based on art history is cool sometimes; I’m guilty of that too. For a while I was into Francis Bacon and Velasquez. I’m into reality, whatever that means?
AP: Well, what does that mean for you? What aspects of reality do you aim to capture?
NB: I’m balancing the realistic and the artificial; the abstract with the concrete. Hopefully there is an element of freedom to the whole thing.
AP: Are there any contemporary artists that inspire your practice?
NB: I’m less into current artists and more into the old masters or even the AbEx painters. I do like Jonathan Meese and Bjarne Melgaard though.
AP: Who do currently collect and whose work do you aspire to collect in the future?
NB: I have work by, Jason McLean, Aaron Michael Skolnick, Trevor Guthrie, Nat Murray and Erin Smith but I also have more than I can talk about here. I’m not a collector but I trade paintings with friends.
AP: What inspired this body of work?
NB: Films like Village of the Damned, shows like Sesame Street, Batman, E.T. the Extraterrestrial things like that.
AP: You draw from pop culture to fuel your work in the art world — where do see pop culture drawing from the art world?
NB: Sesame Street was a bunch of potheads on psychedelics, or so I would like to imagine. My image of Sesame Street brought forth a painting that cannot be explained in reasonable terms. Reality doesn’t matter in painting, you can think of it however you want. That’s what came to mind, I don’t Google everything as I go. In writing you do research and use google, that’s a different process. I’m interested not so much on how one thing draws from another thing but how opposing forces and non-painterly influences can make paintings.
Noah Becker is an acclaimed oil painter with exhibitions at numerous international museums and galleries. Becker is a jazz saxophonist and the founding editor of Whitehot Magazine, also contributing writer for Art in America, Interview Magazine, Canadian Art, the Huffington Post and ARTVOICES. Becker lives and works in New York City.
Noah Becker
Fun Drugs
May 12 – June 1, 2016
Opening reception Thursday, May 12, 7-9 pm
Amy Li Projects
166 Mott Street
New York, NY 10013
347 981 2715
Amy Li Projects