Provosty’s icon series takes its organizing premise from the concept of the icon as a category that dissolves the boundary between object and image, a material surface on which something not entirely material is believed to be present. Her support system — oil on linen mounted on Dibond aluminum composite — is a contemporary construction that provides the rigidity of panel painting with the surface behavior of fabric. The small format (nine by six and a half inches) calls to mind the portability of private devotional objects, a number of which are in the Aardt Collection, whether small tryptchs with hinged wings that are clasped together for travel or miniature books of hours small enough to fit in a pocket. Provosty’s icons arrive at a similar place through abstraction rather than figuration. The painted surface tends toward color fields that are simultaneously veiled and luminous, as though the image is arriving from behind the paint rather than resting on it — an effect that artists working with encaustic in the very early Christian period sought in their devotional objects.
