Alyson Provax | you i everything else
May 2, 2018, through July 1, 2018
First Friday opening reception: May 4, 2018, from 6—8 PM
Wolff Gallery is open Wednesday—Sunday from 11 AM—6 PM (Open until 8 PM on First Fridays)
EXHIBITION INFORMATION
"Sometimes I have the feeling that my experiences are not fully my own, that I have borrowed feelings from the past. This has to lead to a personal interest in epigenetics as I search for the parts of myself that are relics from the experiences of my ancestors or my earlier self."
In her solo exhibition, you i everything else, Alyson Provax highlights this phenomenon of inherited memories and behaviors, and particularly how it manifests in the language used by current and past contestants in the reality television series, The Bachelor. The artist's letterpress prints, light boxes, animations, and mirrors isolate words and phrases participants on the show often repeat from season to season, revealing a shared vernacular that helps to reinforce a particular experience of love and what "authentic" connection looks like. However, as Provax points out, "loneliness exists not in solitude but in concealment. The idea that we should be a consistent and watchable self is a form of this loneliness. We are all inconsistent, the individual self is neither static nor true."
ARTIST INFORMATION
Alyson Provax is a printmaker and an animator. She was born in California in 1984 and lives and works in Portland, Oregon. She has shown regionally at Wolff Gallery, Upfor Gallery, Bridge Productions and the Whatcom Museum, nationally at A.I.R. Gallery and The Untitled Space in New York, and internationally at the Blueproject Foundation in Barcelona. Her work appeared in articles about artists’ responses to the 2016 election in New York Magazine, Newsweek, and ArtSlant. In May 2018 her work will also be on view as a part of A LONE curated by Vignettes and Gramma in Seattle.