Spines

Over the past decade, Alex Olson has made perceptually complex paintings that ask how we understand what we see. She early on thematized acts of reading and interpretation through asemic stand-ins for written texts, and then increasingly used the trope of the stroke or calligraphic line to communicate how paint is simultaneously material and a means of signification. She likewise has described the use of visual speed bumps to slow down apprehension of the whole composition, or to dislodge one from the ease of having a quick glance conform to unconscious habit. In her plays of pattern recognition but also disambiguation, she creates frames for these epistemic processes. Her new works presented in Spines—inclusive of the largest made to date—show Olson moving from wondering aloud, visually, about preconceptions to the limits of knowledge and how it is acquired in the first place.

- Suzanne Hudson