Out of Nothing by Alyson Provax
Alyson Provax, Untitled (how long have I been feeling like this), animated gif/letterpress and eraser on silk paper, 2020.
Alyson Provax, Untitled (I kept thinking of the things we should have done), letterpress on kitikata, 2020.
Alyson Provax, Untitled (when this is all), letterpress and ink on bunkoshi / animated gif, 2020.
Alyson Provax, Untitled (I'm not sure what to say), letterpress on kitikata / animated gif, 2020.
Alyson Provax, Untitled (you have to hold this), letterpress and eraser on kitikata, 7 x 7 inches, 2020.
Alyson Provax, Untitled (what have I missed), letterpress and marker on silk paper / animated gif, 2020.
Alyson Provax, Untitled (I had hoped that we would be together now), letterpress and eraser on silk paper, 9 x 9 inches, 2020.
Alyson Provax, Untitled (I keep wondering what would have been different), letterpress on lokta / animated gif, 2020.
Alyson Provax, Untitled (feels so far away now), letterpress on gampi / animated gif, 2020.
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Out of Nothing
a virtual & interactive exhibition by Alyson Provax
September 21 - November 8, 2020
Artist Talk & Opening Reception: Oct. 9 at 12pm PDT
Artist Workshop: Oct. 30 at 12pm PDT
“Sometimes, all you need is permission to feel.” Olivia Laing, The Lonely City
Periods of sadness and grief encompass more range than we often consider: regret, apprehension, vivid quiet, even momentary electric joy. A period of grief can serve as a bright backlight, illuminating all of the gaps and cracks already in existence but previously unseen.
In the 2009 youtube video David After Dentist the young David, delirious, asks: “Is this going to be forever?” Watching, we know that what he’s experiencing is temporary - that’s the joke - but it can be much harder to see our own feelings as temporary. Being in the experience is the thing. These days do feel like forever.
This show will be a bit different from past shows. There won’t be a place for you to visit, instead I have worked with a couple different formats to make a small body of reproductions that you can incorporate into your individual life, in whatever way feels appropriate to you.
I hope that this show can be a way to feel like we’re together during this lonely year.
-Alyson Provax
Alyson Provax lives and works in Portland, Oregon. She is interested in loneliness, uncertainty, memory, and the other small but powerful specifics of living in our times. Her formal training is as a printmaker and works in letterpress. Her work has been described as “printmaking disinterested in the perfection based traditions that exist as a form of exclusion.” Within those experimental uses of traditional tools she often uses the potential for repetition as a drawing tool, creates original works by manipulating the printed image, or uses physical printed pieces as stills for animation, reproductions into books, blankets, posters, stickers, and billboards.
She has shown regionally at Carnation Contemporary, Wolff Gallery, Upfor Gallery, LxWxH/Bridge Productions, The Vestibule and the Whatcom Museum, nationally at A.I.R. Gallery in New York, Woman Made Gallery in Chicago, Montalvo Arts Center in California, and internationally at the Blue project Foundation in Barcelona.
Her work appeared in articles about artists’ responses to the 2016 election in New York Magazine, Newsweek and ArtSlant. Her work has been published in Poetry Northwest, The Buckman Journal, and Eleven Eleven, and her first book was published by Volumes Volumes in 2019. She has shown temporary public art installations in San Jose this summer as part of Montalvo Arts Center’s ‘lone some’, in Portland in 2019 as ‘something nameless’ and Seattle in 2018, as part of Vignettes and Gramma’s project ‘a lone’.