What a Fool Ever to be Tricked into Seriousness is Provosty’s first comprehensive solo museum presentation. The title derives from a William Carlos William poem in his Surrealist text Kora in Hell. The mischievousness in the title alludes to a common misunderstanding in Provosty’s work, which is the assumption of its formality as both means and end. In fact, though highly crafted objects, the paintings are filled with a dry wit that displaces quick categorization through a manner of visual tricks and painterly manipulations. Noticing sunterranean layers of discourse requires one’s physical experience with the works in real time and space. Anarchisitic in spirit, the paintings resist speed and reproduction (capitalist tools of judgement and exchange): they operate as seductive repellents. What a Fool culminates in a hidden corridor of sumi ink drawings of dragons, once again subverting assumptions about the “meaning” or “conceptual genesis” of the paintings and the exhibition as a whole.


Installation of What A Fool Ever To Be Tricked Into Seriousness



(23-03). Ink on Pochote Bark Paper, 23 x 18 inches (58.42 x 45.72 cm), 2022














Room of artist books; (L-R) A Partial List of Falling, The Color Mill, All Rainbows in a Brainstem, Recording from Printed Matter Swiss Institute Reading, (21-37), 2021, All Rainbows in a Brainstem accordian-fold display





(21-37). Ink and gouache on paper, 23 1/4 x 17 3/4 in (59 x 45 cm), 2021







Hesperidium. Oil on linen, 92 x 78 inches (233.63 x 198.21 cm), 2022







Metronome (19-01). Ink on paper, Nine sheets, each 8 1/4 x 5 7/8 inches (21 x 15 cm), 2019










(21-36). Ink and gouache on paper, 23 3/4 x 18 inches (60.32 x 45.72 cm), 2021







attrackted. Oil on linen, 36 x 23 inches (91.44 x 58.42cm), 2023






Sard (i). Ink, charcoal, chalk and collage on paper, 88 1/2 x 71 1/2 inches (224.79 x 181.61 cm), 2020







Installation  of What A Fool Ever To Be Tricked Into Seriousness

Installation  of What A Fool Ever To Be Tricked Into Seriousness