View the New Exhibit at the Cawein Art Gallery
August 26 - October 3
Exhibition Statement:
My work has often focused on this obscured language. At its best, imprecise language can be a way of pointing at a feeling that is too large or complex to truly share – we only understand its contours relationally, and more than anything we just hope that we’re both pointing at the same mountain. But more recently I started to worry that this is
insufficient because of course I can never truly know how you feel. Maybe this is part of the crisis that Ocean Vuong is talking about, which leads to that feeling that it is impossible to say anything at all. As I turned over the problem within this new body of work, I realized that while a fundamental gap between us will always remain, I still love it that we flail in this way, and that one of the basic principals of constructing reality with another is agreeing on how to talk about it. I guess I should accept that when we say “I know what you mean” it is that my heart is calling out to your heart across the distance between us.
Artist's Biography:
Alyson Provax is a text based artist. Her primary medium is letterpress and she often uses repetition as a drawing tool rather than to make multiple originals. This calls into question the didactic certainty of text and can cause the viewer to notice the experience of reading. She is interested in the ways that we communicate things we are a bit uncertain of and how we tie our understanding of ourselves to language.
She has shown regionally at 1122, Agenda, Carnation Contemporary, Eugene Contemporary Art, Upfor Gallery, The Vestibule, Wolff Gallery, 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. She is a member of the Portland-based Well Well Projects.
She has an interest in alternative projects and in 2020 held an exhibition with Archer Gallery remotely via mail and internet. In 2019 she created a room with animations, blankets, and vinyl text for amplifier an immersive art experience in Portland curated by Blake Shell. In 2018 she made letterpress billboard works shown in Seattle for Vignettes and Gramma’s A LONE, and again in 2019 for something nameless in Portland, and in 2020 for Montalvo Arts Center’s lone some.
Her work has been published in the Buckman Journal, Berm, Poetry Northwest, and The Racket. Her first book was published by Volumes Volumes in 2019, and in 2023 her second book was published by National Monument Press. Her work can be found in the collection of SFMOMA Library and Harvard University Library.
Reception
A reception will be held on Thursday, October 3, from 1 - 2:30pm.
Visiting Hours
The Cawein Gallery is typically open from 9:30am - 5:00pm on weekdays, or by appointment. Contact brum1878@pacificu.edu to schedule an appointment. The gallery follows the undergraduate academic calendar regarding all closures and holidays.