Paul Noble

It was therefore decided to erect a civic monument on the roundabout at the outskirts of town. The monument is a large, vertical structure that spells out the friendly message “Welcome to Nobson.”
—Paul Noble

Gagosian Gallery is pleased to present “Welcome to Nobson,” an exhibition of new drawings and sculpture by Paul Noble.

Noble’s intricate graphite drawings describe Nobson Newtown, a place composed of labyrinthine edifices and deserted topography embedded with modules of dense detail. Employing cavalier projection—a cartographical method characterized by a high viewpoint—Noble meticulously delineates a wealth of elaborate architecture and open urban spaces. These phantasmagorical landscapes allude to sources as diverse as ancient Chinese scrolls, Fabergé eggs, Henry Moore’s sculptures, and paintings by Hieronymus Bosch. The encrypted fictions of Nobson Newtown are dizzyingly complex—visual articulations of the tensions between disorder, perversion, and logical schema.

The immersive drawing Welcome to Nobson (2008–10) is the penultimate work in Noble’s expansive fifteen-year Nobson project, signifying the final stage of the related pictorial and textual narratives. Just as this monumental drawing maps the passage into the world of Nobson Newtown, two towering marble sculptures, Couple (2011) and Three (2011), act as sentries that mark an entrance to the exhibition. Transcending their base connotations, these biomorphic forms serve as three-dimensional counterparts to the characters and monuments depicted in smaller drawings such as Ah (2010) and Walled Garden (2009).