In a way, I was primed for it. The onset of seasonal allergies had, a few weeks earlier, caused my ear canals to contract. When they finally relaxed that morning, I realized just how dulled and vertiginous I’d been for days (your ears maintain a delicate equilibrium). I was still prone to stumble while standing. My doctor showed me a chart of the middle ear, in which he pointed out the anvil, a small bone that transmits auditory stimuli into sensations. He demonstrated for this desperate patient how to apply a strategic pressure, and pop—coming out of the muted haze, I again heard the world hum. The sounds themselves weren’t new, but I could hear the tones between them.
A parallel awakening—one that is visual rather than auditory—is enacted by Nathlie Provosty’s paintings. The title of her latest exhibition, My Pupil is an Anvil, is a physiological and pedagogical double-pun. The pupil is the eye and the “I.” And the anvil, whether iron or phosphate of calcium, forges forms through the reception of pressure and force. While each painting is composed of a single color—black, white, or a mild, tinted green—any painter will tell you that “black” is never really black, white is never white, and green is likewise composed of diverse and unexpected hues. Provosty draws this premise out to its own conclusion. Surfaces that first appear like deep voids, upon looking, tessellate further depth. Contingent upon this visual presence, shades of glittering purples and reds, or yellows and perhaps a glimpse of peach, shimmer into perspective as if the canvas was made of wet velvet. Provosty’s paintings contain within them a kind of totality. You want to reach into them but hesitate—not because it’s forbidden, but for the same reason you pause before a door you knew to be closed but now stands before you open.
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