Wasted Youth: Tim Noble & Sue Webster - Tapa dura

This title offers a first comprehensive look at the work of young British artists Tim Noble and Sue Webster, who live in London. "Wasted Youth" perfectly describes their trash aesthetic and raised finger to their art world contemporaries. It features work exhibited in many major galleries around the world, including the Royal Academy and Saatchi. Enormous neon signs, intricate silhouette portraits constructed of trash heaps, and work titled "Instant Gratification: British artists Tim Noble and Sue Webster" seem enthralled with the thrills of illumination, love, language, shadows, garbage, and cash. Their comprehensive work "Wasted Youth" showcases their work in all its splashy glory. Their art evokes both gaudy Vegas culture and down-and-dirty punk-rock: a combination of bright-light extravagance, which seems to exalt the seductiveness of consumer culture and more! more! attitudes; and an irrereverence, a defiant, rebellious sensibility shining through. Extravagant, sometimes coarse, and always sharply clever, "Wasted Youth" is both a paean to and sly denunciation of modern consumer culture, and, above all, it's fun. Partners in both life and art, Tim Noble and Sue Webster entered the art scene in the mid '90s, initially fringe members of the YBA (Young British Artist) art scene, also known as the "Brit Pack." Noble and Webster quickly turned their back on the Brit Pack with their first critically acclaimed show - called "British Rubbish" - which was a kind of "f***-you" reaction to their art world peers. Ironically, they have since gained international reknown.

Tim Noble and Sue Webster's work has been exhibited at many museums and galleries in the US and UK, including the Royal Academy of Arts in London, MoMA's P.S. 1 in New York, and the Museum of Fine Arts, in Boston. Their work is part of the permanent collection at MoMA, the Guggenheim, and Saatchi. In addition to managing Deitch Projects galleries, Jeffrey Deitch is an art writer and art advisor to collectors. Norman Rosenthal has been the Exhibitions Secretary at the Royal Academy of Art in London for more than twenty-five years.