ARTIST

Los Angeles-based artist Alexandra Noel’s singular paintings lie somewhere between abstraction and realism while inhabiting the nebulous tension between play and unease that sits beneath the veneer of contemporary life. While new subjects and references to images are being constantly introduced in the work, there are several recurring subjects, such as a brush stroke as wind in the form a tornado, impasto paint as a cake’s icing, a self portrait as a newborn, and a real estate sign holder as a fallen crucifix. The power of Noel’s practice comes from the manner in which she preserves multiple readings of her work, creating space for numerous subjectivities through a balance between clarity and ambiguity. Her compact panels reference relationships of scale between the body and handheld devices, treated as images on-screen—zoomed in, cropped, stretched, or rescaled.

"Dog's POV through dog gate in Volvo station wagon", 2017, is as the title implies. It is based on a childhood memory, a point of reference often used in Noel's practice. But instead of this being about her own memory, it evolved out of the fabricated memory of her family dog. The end result is a geometric abstract pattern with one foot in the door of a family car and the other foot on a stage set for a play. This particular painting was part of a series that first began a technique now more prevalent in the artist's practice; an impasto painting effect which mimics stucco, a housing material utilized abundantly in Noel's hometown of Southern California.

Born 1989 in Columbus, Ohio; lives and works in Los Angeles, CA

CHARITY

Our soup kitchen, commonly known on the street as “The Hippie Kitchen,” is located in the downtown neighborhood of L.A.’s Skid Row. With more than 60,000 unhoused people in Los Angeles County, including more than 5,000 in the Skid Row area, with its numerous street encampments, rescue missions, and single-room occupancy hotels, Los Angeles has been dubiously named “the homeless capital of the nation.” Moreover, the 50 square block area known as Skid Row is also the most policed area in the nation.