In Japanese folklore, the ungaikyo is a demonic mirror that bewitches with its reflections. But there is disagreement over what he actually does. Some say he shows spooky and changing illusions to frighten and charm; others say the mirror is sacred and reveals disguised shapeshifters by exposing their true forms. Does the living mirror lie to dazzle or does it reveal deeper unseen truths? This is also the question of art.
Nathlie Provosty’s show “What A Fool Ever To Be Tricked Into Seriousness” reminded me of this Japanese legend. On the one hand, it is because the phenomenon of reflection plays a key role in Provosty’s paintings. His canvases are divided by staggered geometry, with different color and surface treatment carefully applied to each section to create puzzle-like, yet cohesive tableaux. Some sections of his paintings are very glossy, while others are completely matte, so their appearance changes dramatically depending on the light in the room and the angle of the viewer’s gaze. The brilliant painting of a dark painting like the monumental The life of forms, 2017, can appear blindingly white from certain positions, like a black mirror would. Meanwhile, subtle and pale paints such as Afterimage, 2019, with its swaths of delicate white layered over different but equally subtle hues of white, can look simply pristine from some vantage points. Grasping the complex compositions of the works requires concentration. And they are virtually unphotographable.
Provosty’s works force one to examine them spatially and to be aware of one’s surroundings, qualities normally associated with sculpture. With regard to his canvases, we notice that their sides are tilted, with edges often painted in colors that contrast with the dominant palette of the painting, creating the illusion that the painting is floating in front of the wall. Untitled (i), 2021, for example, consists of different shades of orange, but its edges are lime green and blue. Although rigorous in their formal pictorial language, these paintings insist that an image is also always an object in a space, and must be experienced as such – a truth so fundamental that it is often overlooked. They are reminiscent of Adolf Loos’ assertion that any building that looks like a two-dimensional drawing is failed architecture, because the spatial quality of good architecture is irreducible to pictorial representation. Perhaps we can say that, similarly, a painting whose essence can be captured in a photograph is a failed painting.
But beyond the optical sensations generated by Provosty’s work, there is something both exhilarating and disconcerting in the way viewers’ movements can so radically transform these paintings. Returning to The life of forms, I was immediately struck by the huge, shiny U-shape that dominates the painting. But after a while, I started seeing many other shapes hidden in the matte sections that serve as the background for the shiny U. Then I realized that all the action in the painting was happening in the muted and dull regions initially overshadowed by the striking central shape. The way these shape-shifting paintings change in appearance as you look at them is disturbing. And, as if to underline this art’s affinity for the enigmatic and its distance from all pure formalism, the exhibition included drawings of wyverns and dragons metamorphosing into geometric shapes. Like the animated reflections in the demonic mirror, Provosty’s paintings amaze and fascinate, offering different visions to each viewer. At the same time, they reveal elusive truths about works of art as physical beings and affirm the beauty of viewing them in the material world.
