Parallax
Mixed Media Installation,
MICA Curated Faculty Exhibition, it can begin with clouds,
Curated by John Ros

ICA Baltimore, Solo Exhibition

Absence/Presence is a new body of work that explores absence as a presence and a sensation connected to spatial memory. Through a series of drawings, paintings, and digitally fabricated objects, Janet Olney asks viewers to navigate the ambiguity of the seen and unseen while grappling with the fleeting nature of perception. Using a language of abstraction and gesture, Olney remixes the various components to reflect on existence and the passage of time.

Visarts in Rockville, December 2017 

From the press release: In this body of work, Janet Olney applies conditional statements and logic to perceptual events. The paintings propose if-then statements and offer a conclusion open to inference. This series is based on two-value truth tables that Olney constructs using shapes. By building logical statements of visual forms, her tables show how the truth or falsity of a visual expression ultimately depends on the truth or falsity of its components. If the premise of abstract forms is true, then the painting must also be considered valid. Each painting considers the visual values and draws a conclusion about the realm in which they exist.

This work explores the fuzzy reality at play in the outlying regions of the periphery. Things in the fringes of our field of vision are flickers of shape and movement. These fleeting glimpses and shadows are incorporated into the narrative of our surroundings. This peripheral information taps into both interpretation and imagination -- what we experience and what we believe we see.