Tithe, 2024 Oil on canvas  250 x 400 

UNAVAILABLE

Grace is pleased to present Mise-en-scène, a new collection of paintings by Thom le Noël and the inaugural presentation of Stockroom.

Mise-en-scène manifests as figurations of dissemblance, a space of personal ruin emanating from 13th-century Christian theology associated with Thomas Aquinas. From this region of abjection, le Noël attests to a repertoire of locally constituted ritual, Christian pictorial convention, and sub-cultural identification.

The paintings appear coloured at night, with canvases that shimmer with some other communion. And what light there is, appears as a flash on the body’s contours, the jewel-like adornments weighted in impressionistic strobes. Through these oil-bound methods, the Painter casts a hallowed form, as bodies are willed into nocturnal Christian enactments.

Mise-en-scène is replete with performative acts, from the Politician’s prayer to the Reveller’s eucharist, le Noël renders these moments with a formal exactitude that infers transcendence. It is a counter-liturgical practice that is devoid of faith, as art historical conventions of the Church are enacted on the quotidian spectacle of the Self.

Thom le Noël (1999) is an artist working in modes of conceptual and figurative painting, situated within the production of politics and the philosophy of representation. Since graduating from ELAM School of Fine Arts in 2023, Le Noël has begun an independent painting practice in Tāmaki Makaurau.

Please contact the gallery for a full catalogue of Mise-en-scène.