ART CITIES:Frankfurt -Laure Prouvost
Laure Prouvost is an artist who makes complex installations involving video works characterised by layered stories, surreal humour and wordplay. The artist’s concern is with penetration of unknown worlds, escape from everyday life, and the conscious loss of the self in the hope of ultimately finding one’s way back to it again.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: MMK Archive
The exhibition “all behind, we’ll go deeper, deep down and she will say:”, is the second and central chapter of a three-part survey of the work of Laure Prouvost . In this setting, she unites several of her filmic works of the past years with sculptural and painterly elements to create an overall narrative. Hybrids oscillating between technical apparatuses and human figures will serve as the installation’s main architectural structure. The point of departure for the presentation is a story invented by the artist about her fictitious grandparents. The grandfather, a satire on the heroic artist figure, has dug a tunnel within the framework of an art project, disappeared inside it and never turned up again. The actual protagonist, however, is the grandmother, who – with the aid of relics of their shared past – tells of her own fantasies, hopes and dreams. With a monumental sign reading “IDEALLY YOU WOULD LEAVE EVERYTHING BEHIND” (2016), Prouvost calls upon the visitors to immerse themselves in her bizarre fantasy world even before they enter the exhibition rooms. In the entrance area, reference is then made to this request in the installations “On Our Way” (2016) and “Deep Travels Ink”. (2016), both conceived especially for the exhibition. The visitor finds himself in a travel agency setting and becomes a player in a surreal scenario that puts him in the mood for the show’s central themes: the longing for the unknown and submersion in remote worlds, escape from everyday life and the deliberate loss of the self in the hope of ultimately finding one’s way back to it. For the first time, the artist has here removed the films from their individual spatial settings and merged them to form a kind of dream world. Prouvost’s films always transcend the narrative level. She explores the seductive power of images, their illusory potential, and the immediate spatial dimension. In the exhibition she links the filmic space with the real, and investigates the interplay of image, sound, written text and language. Particularly in “Feeling the Wall” (2014), she creates an awareness of the exhibition architecture, which proves to be the chief protagonist of this sound and light installation.
Info: MMK 3, Museum für Moderne Kunst, Zollamt, Domstraße 3, Frankfurt, Duration: 3/9-6/11/16, Days & Hours: Tue & Thu-Sun 10:00-18:00, Wed 10:00-20:00, http://mmk-frankfurt.de
