INTERIOR PASSAGES: JOAN OLIVER

“No one ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and they’re not the same person.” — Heraclitus

Gallery 495 is pleased to present Interior Passages, a solo exhibition by Joan Oliver (b. 1950, Albany) opening February 14, 2026. Tracing Oliver’s lifelong movement through form, material, and inner space, the exhibition unfolds as a mystic meditation on change, return, and the quiet transformations that occur over time.

Oliver’s life and practice have been shaped by travel and long periods of living in different places, often near a body of water. These geographies—coastal edges, riverbanks, and transitional landscapes—have informed her sensitivity to flow and reflection.

Materials expand accordingly. Textile, collage, and both wet and dry media are worked through processes of scratching, cutting, perforating, stitching, layering, and repair. These gestures leave visible traces of making and metamorphosis. The process remains central throughout Oliver’s practice. Chance and imperfection are not corrected but welcomed, allowing each work to register time as an active force.

Rather than offering resolution, the works in Interior Passages invite sustained attention. Viewers are drawn inward—into metaphysical and spatial thresholds where meaning remains open and continually in flux. Like Heraclitus’s river, Oliver’s forms are never fixed; they reappear altered, shaped by memory, material, and lived experience.