Nathlie Provosty: What A Fool Ever To Be Tricked Into Seriousness

The exhibition stems from the conscious and direct approach that characterizes Provosty’s work to investigate the constant misunderstandings that govern the way human beings perceive the world, through a body of oil paintings and works on paper never shown before.

The exhibition, specifically conceived for Fondazione ICA Milano, brings together a selection of works never presented before together with earlier productions, inviting the visitor to enter a space of pure perception. Nathlie Provosty’s paintings and works on paper can be considered as landscapes of shapes and surfaces, where a measured juxtaposition of levels and colours is in place, creating unexpected images as a way to unveil the contradictions of everyone’s life path.

Provosty’s straightforward and seductive language emerges, ironically, by way her sincere investigation into the history of art, the materials of the artist, the creation of an abstract lexicon, and the moulding of painting into a time-based medium capable of revealing personal and complex human inquiry. A trick is a cunning act designed to deceive or outwit, however the artist uses sleight of hand manipulations of paint and surfaces to “trip” the viewer into deeper sensitivity to their own feelings and what the painting is actually doing.