On July the 2nd at the Unit/Pitt Gallery, 163 West Pender Street in Vancouver, An Extremely Pleasant Environment will be presented by Bill Noy with Jay Samwald. Subtitled Not Expo 86, An Extremely Pleasant Environment is a refreshing new look at paranoia. Paranoia from the Greek derivatives: para: above, beside; and noia: active for noos: sight, vision. An Extremely Pleasant Environment is a paranoid and ironic meander through sculpture, oil paintings, video and film.
Noy’s previous shows have always engaged different visual media, from sheet metal oxidized with acids, to gentle and grotesque commentaries on this world. Two earlier shows included Scary Pictures, with Mark Murphy, and Dirty Pictures, both of which were pioneering efforts into the Art of Dystopia, thorough and aggravating, resonant and frightening. As a resident of the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, Noy’s current work reflects in a prophetic and metaphorical sense the human impact of mega development on the district. His vision is also global, as is exhibited particularly well in his oils. A Penny for Your Thoughts is an eerie cenotaph for the arms race and All the Way with the CIA probes the vigilante nature of Imperialism. Bill attended the Vancouver College of Art and has travelled extensively throughout Europe and Prince Rupert.
Jay Samwald’s video and films share many thematic concerns with Noy’s macabre inventions. Close Personal Friends is a short story on super eight about three groups in refuge in a post historical world. It is dissonant and naive. Secret Weapon poses another vision of an apocalypse, on a more choreographic and personal level. New State TV is a fragment of popular media from 1989. Samwald’s work has ben described as “imaginative and unpretentious” – Jowett, Village Voice; “wholesome and bizarre.” He currently works as accounts receivables for Co-op Radio.