Nathlie Provosty

About

Composed of two series of paintings, the exhibition plumbs the phenomenon of visual inaudible sound. Inaudible sound is sound that humans physically respond to, although they cannot hear it. Provosty proposes that this inaudible territory parallels the unseeable areas just outside the color spectrum. Her paintings therefore utilize colors at the far reaches of the spectrum, coupled with surfaces that vibrate and disappear, activating an expanded multi-sensory experience.

Resisting reproducibility, the three 84 x 92-inch paintings appear, at first, to be fields of black anchored by a dipping reflective shape. The color, however, is not truly black, but rather layers of dark blue, violet, and various carbon pigments; from these sensuous surfaces, unexpected, images emerge. The smaller works (Dissonance, Assonance, Consonance, and Resonance, all 19 x 15 inches), with their saturated colors and syncopated, sometimes linguistic rhythms, add subtle textural nuance to the overall somatic experience of the exhibition. Executed with exceptional rigor and intensive craft, Provosty’s works hover between illusion and abstraction, evoking elusive fluctuations of physical, spatial, and conceptual depth.