Janis Provisor Recent Paintings at Canada

Janis Provisor: Living on Hart installation view CanadaGallery showing Hammertown (left) and Livid (right), both 2024

Janis Provisor: Living on Hart
Canada
61 Lispenard Street, New York

By EDWARD WAISNIS January 3, 2025

Janis Provisor had her first shows at Holly Solomon Gallery, that quirky temple of decoration that I previously wrote of in a review of the recent revival exhibition of work by Provisor stablemate Kim MacConnel. Her work garnered attention for a pioneering use of material, namely modeling paste, that afforded her the ability to project her compositions into bas-relief constructions that earned comparison to Elizabeth Murray’s own nascent experimentation. The sculpted and carved surfaces also seemed to be in an unforced dialogue with the high-contrast (pre-plate) paintings of Julian Schnabel that, in hindsight, exposed a misogynist/feminist dichotomy.

In the decades that followed, Provisor moved toward lyricism, relying on glazes, and extending the injection of innovation by incorporating the bling of metallic leaf to her canvases. Contrasting panels appeared in a spirit, it seemed, to what both Sean Scully and Pat Steir were engaged in. Stripped of the artifice, Provisor has surrendered to the direct and the unprocessed, having traversed late modernism and its requirement of assigning style to arrive in the twenty-first century with its floundering wide-embrace.

Where Picasso sought to recapture innocence, and therefore purity (of form, of intent, of reaction), in the creative spark found in being new to the world - this mood of discovery is alive in Provisor’s work. The initial effect reading as a confident child’s refrigerator-worth pieces, or, given Provisor’s often go-to of working against a dark ground, an adolescent prodigy’s rendition of black light posters.

Janis Provisor, Mask, 2020, watercolor, gouache and water-soluble oil on linen, 60 x 50 inches

I would classify Provisor’s work as New York paintings, with odes to Amy Sillman (especially the works on paper) and Rita Ackermann (in appreciation of where obscuring serves image making) and even, bringing in stirrings from the U.K., Tracy Emin (treasuring looseness), the most pertinent comparison is to German painting of the 1980s, specifically that of the members of the Neue Wilde, particularly that of Walter Dahn. Provisor, free from Teutonic angst, cooler in nature and less reliant on the slapdash, nevertheless is likeminded in her surrender to the id and a healthy tapping of the louche.

Provisor often begins with the laying down of stream of consciousness phrases and letter structures with crayon and pencil that are then transmuted to broadsides by the coats of paint applied in a spirit of automatism that is aided by the use of water-based mediums (including water-soluble oils); fluidity rules the day.

Mask, 2020, made at the height of the pandemic communicates as a blatant signifier of the tragedy as it unfolded. A swath of black, occupying the lower half of the canvas, represents the titular accessory one brandished against the virus. An ‘x’– the universal cartoon signifier of demise–supplicates the pupil in one of the rudimentarily rendered eyes scrawled above the fascial cloak, with a looping line casually filling in for a nose. The whimsy is pressed upon by foreboding of memory and the caution of warning.

Janis Provisor, Come Come, 2024, black gesso, watercolor, water-soluble oil, crayon, pencil and pen on linen, 74 x 62 inches

Come Come, 2024, with blaring sweeping passages of orange and pink against a black field that coalesce around a blue form that has settled into a volume reminiscent of a cone or, given the placement the two perfect circles that expose the black ground that can be construed as eyeholes, a hood, resurrecting Guston’s Klan hoods. Or, conversely, is the entire affair an elbow in the ribs with a slight of a comical sort?

With recent talk of U.A.Ps and drones invading, could Livid, 2024, be winking at a yearned for alien encounter by reading the central orange figure as said creature, while another side of the equation querying as to whether celestial or test tube in origin.

Janis Provisor, Livid, 2024, black gesso, watercolor, water-soluble oil, chalk, pencil and pen on linen, 74 x 62 inches
 

Striptease, 2024, once again sporting a black ground, dazzles with the bombast of a night in an edgy neighborhood vibe. The horizontal line of blocky forms reading as a distant stand of building harbored beneath a roiling sky of red clouds; my fabulation is spurred by the title of the work. On the other hand, from a formalist perspective, it is a brazen piece of painting concerned with light.

Janis Provisor, Striptease, 2024, black gesso and watercolor on linen, 74 x 62 inches

Romance, 2024, a square canvas, hung in a huddle with works on paper and emanated great presence from the niche it was installed in. The eminence of a distraught head mummified in a fluid, bubbly, miasma of a radiating purple puddle surrounded by (or emerging from) a burled wood enclosure–cave, burrow, lair, transport? The contrast between the two elements, with uninflected white separating them, is strikingly discordant and exceedingly memorable.

Janis Provisor, Romance, 2024, watercolor, water-soluble oil, marker, pencil and crayon on linen, 50 x 50 inches
 

Home, 2020, One of a trio of works on paper offers a hulking black rectangular form punctuated by three square openings that one, based upon the title, takes as windows, against a field of fluid swipes of green tan and white.

Janis Provisor, Home, 2020, watercolor, gouache, pencil and crayon on paper, 23.5 x 19.5 x 2 inches

Janis Provisor, Mister, 2020, gouache, pencil and crayon on paper, 23 x 19.5 x 2 inches
 

Mister, 2020, in keeping with the masculine title, creeps into the domain of an eagle emblem–think Albanian flag–but may simply be the subliminal result of the Rorschach inspired technique used by Provisor brining about visualization of a crest. In any case, it conveys a regal quality. Lulu, 2020 goes from ooze to crepuscular, the alchemy leading one to consider the options of plant-life versus intestinal.

Janis Provisor, Lulu, 2020, watercolor, gouache, pencil and crayon on paper, 23.5 x 19.5 x 2 inches

Aligning with my deeply held belief that the new year provides the satisfaction–for better or worse–of deliverance firmly (finally) into the twenty-first century and all the prospects that lie ahead. I feel confident in expressing that Provisor’s practice offers one facet of where painting is going in this new era.

Exhibition dates: November 22, 2024–January 11, 2025