Bortolami

Into the changed air features works by four contemporary abstract painters, each developing atmospheric space through divergent approaches to mark making. Han Bing (b. 1986, China; lives in Paris, France) builds palimpsestic compositions in which earlier gestures are deliberately left unobscured. She foregrounds jagged, overlapping edges which recall the remnants of torn street posters and advertisements of urban environments. Richard Hoblock (b.1954, USA; lives in Orient, New York) works on oiled, unprimed wood panels, using the inherent directionality of woodgrain surfaces to dictate the beginnings of his compositions. Using a combination of brush and palette knife, Hoblock spreads arcs of color across the surfaces and pulls paint along angular, energetic lines to create tight compositions unique to each painting. Vian Sora (b. 1976, Iraq; lives in Louisville, Kentucky) pits the precision of hard edged painting against an approach rooted in both chance and dissolution. Crisp, calligraphic shapes are overlaid upon soft, colorful grounds. Sora works flat, dispersing powdered pigments into aqueous painting mediums so that colors might “bloom” into one another. Lesley Vance (b. 1977, USA; lives in Los Angeles, California) crates compositions in which distinctions of positive and negative space are deliberately confused. Slick, sinuous bands of monochromatic color encircle multicolor grounds which have been intentionally abraded to create textures reminiscent of the natural world.

Threshold Speech, the title of Nathlie Provosty’s new exhibition, is a phrase taken from poet Paul Celan. It references the limitations of communicating that which exists outside of language. In an attempt to build a vocabulary for the unspeakable, Celan created a poetics of the “counter word” that upended linguistic conventions. Similarly, Provosty’s approach to abstraction subverts the dominant draconian demands placed on our attention. Through subtlety, sensuality, and a pictorial language that eludes, betrays, and rewards, the paintings act as receptacles of alternative communication systems.