A Net for Catching Days: Sean Noonan and Alberte Tranberg at Devening Projects

by benjamin terrell

Installation view of A Net for Catching Days at Devening Projects.

Seen together, metal fixtures and painted found wood suggest building and dismantling, new technology and the obsolete, the machine and the hand, or perhaps even the beginning and end of "thingness." Painter Sean Noonan and sculptor Alberte Tranberg are poetically paired reductionists abridging alphabets into a pocketful of personal iconographies. Look - Noonan's expressive line loping like a numeral freeing itself from its assigned quantity, a cadence of cursive dissolving on top of an ostracon of cast-off timber. And look- Tranberg's repeating slim structures of steel and wax, like tactile turnstiles for riders of unknown passage, both light post and landing gear illuminating journeys of un-ornamentation. How best to tune in to this subtle and rewarding dialogue? Imagine each artist as a fluent figure skater and their chosen material (prior to their re-imagining) as the vast, untouched ice where fragility is transformed into a solid stage for surprise and wonder.

Above: Sean Noonan
Falmouth Harbour, 2O22, enamel and oil on found wood, 6 x 11 inches

Below: Sean Noonan
Talisman 2, 2O23, oil on panel, 4.5 x 9.5 inches​

Noonan's gift is glyphs and a color sensibility reminiscent of old steamer trunk stickers. His are the simmering shades of the iconic, as if a totem shed tiles as a reminder that once freed from representation, a painting can bristle beyond language. But even as a Noonan hue shimmers independent of image, it also evokes different latitudes and longitudes in painting's history. There are Baselitz colors, Heilman colors, Resika colors, Munter colors, muddied and mingling with bold souls, as if someone broke into a mid-career Philip Guston and made off with the most precious part of its currency. Noonan's titles often talk of talisman, mark the time of day/night, or sometimes name a specific harbor or lake, and the latter could be an estuary for imagination or a placeholder for actual object origin. But like a body of water or a poem or a sailing vessel, the artist's titles feel as if they commemorate mainly maiden voyages. Perhaps the acknowledgement is this- after its departure an object of interest's essence is always in its continual motion. 

Above: Alberte Tranberg
Stool (legs) I, II, III, 2O23, steel, patina, wax

Below: Alberte Tranberg
Fixture (light) #26, 2O21, steel, patina, wax, 32 x 3.5 x 3.5 inches

Tranberg creates inversions of the candelabra, her work wearing its wax on the bottom as if the whole earth was the flame that smolders beyond the artist's armatures. Echoed also is Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, his protagonist's basement apartment pipes and the 1,369 lights that fail to illumine what is beyond the vision of the average inner flame. Both book and sculptor speak of current, conductivity and an immeasurable life force that lies beyond the limitations of the senses. And what sculpture with rounding repeated form doesn't reminisce of ribs, cribs or the graceful generosity of playground fittings? Perhaps for the artist this earth is both furnace and belly of a whale and one day some copper cough will belch us all into the real world of what can't be known. In companion, Tranberg also casts would be lamps with microphone tendencies (sometimes into impotent angles) as if to suggest speaking and seeing are both informed through the  limitation of their action.

Sean Noon
Cantilever, 2O23, oil on found wood, 15 x 9 inches

A cantilever is a floating beam or gravity defying structure anchored at only one end. Noonan's painting of that title has a battleship grey ground split down the center and up one side by a green pillar on which floats an orange banner. The orange is a line from a paint filled brush that pulls up from the bottom and circles gracefully at the top before thinning in its descent. It is a discovery born from what feels like only a few decisions, yet it could be the incantation page of endless novels. A cantilever could also reference the sturdy illusion both Tranberg and Noonan harvest from problem solving alone in the same artistic orchards. Tranberg's light stands might invite the idea of being spoken into like a microphone, but they also suggest a contrary action - quiet, curious listening. Any well-made effort always contemplates its opposite. Which is to say, The Net that Catches Days also gives away to the meditation of nights. And just as the day owns the dusk, the night chaperons the dawn from unknowable darkness into everything new that takes form.

Above: Alberte Tranberg
Fixture (light) #16, 2O21, steel, patina, wax, 7O.5 x 12 x 12 inches

​Below: A Net for Catching Days at Devening Projects.

You can see more:

     - on Sean Noonan's instagram page: @past.the.sun
     - on Alberte Tranberg's instagram page: @a.tranberg
     - on Tranberg's website: www.albertetranberg.com/
     - on the Devening Projects webiste: deveningprojects.com/
     - on the Devening Projects instagram page: @devening_projects


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