Nathlie Provosty: Kinesics

Kinesics is the interpretation of the nonverbal gestures of the body. It holds the belief that all physical movements—posture, blinks, a blush, etc.—convey meaning. A grammar of unspoken communication emerges. Painting, particularly abstract painting, has a special capacity for the nonverbal realm. Transmissions are not necessarily didactic, nor prescribed… they can be feelings— understood but impossible to say. The viewer is entrusted with the agency of their own insights.

The exhibition of new works, all 2023, features oil paintings and ink drawings that radically expand Nathlie Provosty’s material syntax with wide messy strokes, collage, pattern, spill, scratch, and dab. There are shaped canvases designed to imply perspective, artist-designed resin frames that extend the tactile drawings into sculptures, and modifications to the gallery space that create areas of compression and translucency. An argument for the necessity of expansion and risk, Kinesics is the artist’s most dynamic and experimental exhibition to date.