Installation view of Nathlie Provosty’s ‘(the third ear)’ (photo by the author for Hyperallergic)
Nathlie Provosty’s current exhibition at Nathalie Karg Gallery, (the third ear), is a study in the emotional, sensuous (and sensual) potential of tightly bound, minutely considered, rigorously constructed abstraction. The show consists of three large paintings (grouped against a long wall, flanked by tall windows) and 12 smaller works, all abstracts in carefully controlled tonalities. Provosty is interested in inaudible sound and how it impacts humans; her work here explores its parallels in the color spectrum. It is an eloquent, supremely assured corrective to both discourses and practices prevalent in current abstraction: a counterpoint to critiques of fatuousness or irrelevance, it resonates by diving into itself, transports without shouting.
Three large black paintings — “Twice Six” (2016), “Gilles” (2014), and “West” (2016), all 84 by 92 inches — appear, at first glance, to anchor the show. They are multilayered, disruptive explorations of dichotomy (conceptually half of “black-and-white”) that quickly dispense with any essentializing notion of color. Provosty’s “blacks” are hardly straightforward: there are variations in texture and tone, in opacity and reflectivity. She flirts with a central shape, which gestures toward the figurative while remaining resolutely abstract. The works are demanding: looked at simply, head-on, they are black-on-black compositions. To see them fully requires approaching them very closely and seeing where the first layers of the paint — royal blue; deep violet; a near-cerulean so vibrant it’s shocking we could ever have overlooked it — bleed out at the edges of the canvases. They diffuse at the margins, resonating into space.
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