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The Fall | Dan Noble & Robin Roi

The Fall | Dan Noble & Robin Roi 
On view Saturdays, September, 6, 13, 20, 27, 1-5pm or by appointment 
Curated by Pam Wong  

Featuring paintings by Dan Noble and paper works by Robin Roi, The Fall contemplates human fragility and resilience.  
 
Dan Noble’s recent paintings explore the profound and unsettling moment of falling, focusing on the human body in motion and the moment when the body succumbs to gravity. While the act of falling carries a sense of danger, the focus of this collection is not on the impact, but on the journey down—that brief, weightless instant when the mundane world dissolves and a person is suspended between solid ground and an uncertain future. The figures exist in a liminal space, an instance of pure, unchoreographed movement.  
 
Noble’s paintings explore the moments when we are most vulnerable. But within that vulnerability, there is beauty and grace — the human spirit that, despite the fall, may eventually rise again.  
 
Robin Roi’s works combine three of her loves – paper, pattern, and narrative. The Four Fiancés and Milagros are composed with Joss paper, a symbolic material traditionally burned as an offering during Buddhist and Taoist funerals or ceremonies honoring ancestors. “Milagros” or “miracles” are a form of Latin American folk art related to faith and healing. The small charms are typically placed on altars as offerings or symbols of devotion.
 
Representing formal wear and finery from another era, Roi’s pieces consider mortality, tradition, and hope.  
 

Dan Noble’s recent series of paintings was inspired by the poem The descent by William Carlos Williams.

The descent beckons
As the ascent beckoned.
Memory is a kind
of accomplishment,
a sort of renewal
even
an initiation, since the spaces it opens are new places
inhabited by hordes
heretofore unrealized,
of new kinds—
since their movements
are toward new objectives
(even though formerly they were abandoned).
No defeat is made up entirely of defeat—since
the world it opens is always a place
formerly
unsuspected. A
world lost,
a world unsuspected
beckons to new places
and no whiteness (lost) is so white as the memory
of whiteness.
With evening, love wakens
Though its shadows
which are alive by reason
of the sun shining—
grow sleepy now and drop away
from desire.
Love without shadows stirs now
beginning to awaken
as night
advances.
The descent made up of despair
and without accomplishment
realizes a new awakening:
which is a reversal
of despair.
For what we cannot accomplish, what
is denied to love,
What we have lost in the anticipation—
a descent follows
endless and indestructible.