ART CITIES:Paris-Laure Prouvost

Laure Prouvost, view of the exhibition “A Way to Leak, Lick, Leek”, Fahrenheit by FLAX, Los Angeles, 2016 , Foreground: A Way to Leak, Lick, Leek, 2016, vinyl tiles, resin, various electronic items, paper sheeting, iPads, iPhones, tablet screens, foliage, metal, plastic, wood, cables, polyester seats., Background: Lick in the Past, 2016, video, 8’23’’, Photo Jeff McLane, Courtesy of the artist and Nathalie Obadia (Paris / Brussels), carlier|gebauer (Berlin), Lisson Gallery (London / New York)Laure Prouvost’s work adopts the form of independent stories that intersect and answer to each other, in which fiction mixes with reality. These situations become immersive installations, inviting escapism, in a dialogue between films, sculptures, paintings, tapestries, performances or fragmentary tales, sometimes addressed directly at visitors. Generous and full of humour, her work examines the relationships between language, image and perception, placing the visitors in situations of doubt and incomprehension, but also a wonder which is both intellectual and sensorial.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Palais de Tokyo Archive

For her first solo exhibition in a Parisian institution, Laure Prouvost presents “Ring, Sing and Drink for Trespassing”, an exhibition manifesting  as an escape that is both psychological and geographical. The Palais de Tokyo is transformed into a space where nature is purported to have taken over from humanity. Inspired by global warming, the exhibition invites us to explore and celebrate ambiguity by being at once intimate and expansive. Messages elsewhere spill over from the confines of the exhibition: “IDEALLY THIS PLANT WOULD GROW BOOBS AND PRODUCE MILK” or “IDEALLY HERE WOULD BE A SMALL CRACK IN THE WALL YOU COULD PASS THROUGH” in a demonstration of cognitive delinquency for both language and space. Through these multiplying and concertinaing viewpoints, the exhibition operates as an ode to diagonal lines, the transcending of limits and the joy of slipping over a fence to discover a wasteland. Or, a now-abandoned but marvelous garden, in which the artist has discovered a forgotten dystopic biological laboratory. Upending traditional conventions of exhibition access, a curved corridor covered in woven tapestries invites you to enter an unknown territory. This evolves into a metallic network of manufactured objects, interwoven with branches, car mirrors, raspberries, collages, newspaper clips and vases in the shapes of bottoms with flowers a first indication that nature is annexing the building’s architecture and that the outside world has lodged itself into the interstices of this place. At the center of the exhibition, a large fountain of breasts is waiting to feed you. This appears as a respite, a place where the viewer can reflect after discovering the atypical panoramas conceived by the artist. A new video work is also shown, which reflexively incorporates some of the physical elements present in the exhibition. In “Ring, Sing and Drink for Trespassing” Laure Prouvost, more than presenting anthropomorphized objects, creates a cast of characters with whom the visitor shares the assembly. Characters with flat screen TV and mirror faces, branches with mammalian outgrowths or buttock implants and fruits and vegetables topped up with GMOs as well as other elements claim their agency via prosopopoeic means and become arbiters for the mechanisms of culture. Responding to these cues the viewer engages with these artworks with often humorous outcomes as they are exposed as the lead protagonist in the landscape of possible scenarios. Subsequently this immersive installation forces us to reconsider our viewpoints and our understanding of the world at large.

Info: Curator: Daria de Beauvais, Exhibition Designer: Diogo Passarinho,Palais de Tokyo, 13 avenue du Président Wilson, Paris, Duration: 22/6-9/9/18, Days & Hours: Mon & Wed-Sun: 12:00-24:00, www.palaisdetokyo.com

Laure Prouvost, Swallow me, From Italy to Flander, a tapestry, 2015, Tapestry, 200 x 462 cm, Courtesy of the artist and Nathalie Obadia (Paris / Brussels), carlier | gebauer (Berlin), Lisson Gallery (London / New York)
Laure Prouvost, Swallow me, From Italy to Flander, a tapestry, 2015, Tapestry, 200 x 462 cm, Courtesy of the artist and Nathalie Obadia (Paris/Brussels), carlier|gebauer (Berlin), Lisson Gallery (London/New York)

 

 

Laure Prouvost, view of the exhibition “GDM – Grand Dad’s Visitor Center”, Pirelli HangarBicocca-Milan, 2016 Photo: Agostino Osio, Courtesy of the artist and Pirelli HangarBicocca-Milan
Laure Prouvost, view of the exhibition “GDM – Grand Dad’s Visitor Center”, Pirelli HangarBicocca-Milan, 2016 Photo: Agostino Osio, Courtesy of the artist and Pirelli HangarBicocca-Milan

 

 

Laure Prouvost, view of the exhibition “GDM – Grand Dad’s Visitor Center”, Pirelli HangarBicocca-Milan, 2016 Photo: Agostino Osio, Courtesy of the artist and Pirelli HangarBicocca-Milan
Laure Prouvost, view of the exhibition “GDM – Grand Dad’s Visitor Center”, Pirelli HangarBicocca-Milan, 2016 Photo: Agostino Osio, Courtesy of the artist and Pirelli HangarBicocca-Milan

 

 

Laure Prouvost, It’s All Happening Behind, 2015, Oil and varnish on wood panel, Courtesy of the artist and Nathalie Obadia (Paris/Brussels), carlier|gebauer (Berlin), Lisson Gallery (London/New York)
Laure Prouvost, It’s All Happening Behind, 2015, Oil and varnish on wood panel, Courtesy of the artist and Nathalie Obadia (Paris/Brussels), carlier|gebauer (Berlin), Lisson Gallery (London/New York)

 

 

Laure Prouvost, The Smoking Image, 2015, Tapestry, 290 x 424 cm, Courtesy of the artist and Nathalie Obadia (Paris / Brussels), carlier | gebauer (Berlin), Lisson Gallery (London / New York)
Laure Prouvost, The Smoking Image, 2015, Tapestry, 290 x 424 cm, Courtesy of the artist and Nathalie Obadia (Paris/Brussels), carlier|gebauer (Berlin), Lisson Gallery (London/New York)

 

 

Laure Prouvost, view of the installation “We would be floating away from the dirty past”, part of the series DER ÖFFENTLICHKEIT − Von den Freunden Haus der Kunst, Haus der Kunst-Munich, 2015, Photo: Wilfried Petzi, Courtesy of the artist and Nathalie Obadia (Paris/Brussels), carlier|gebauer (Berlin), Lisson Gallery (London/New York)
Laure Prouvost, view of the installation “We would be floating away from the dirty past”, part of the series DER ÖFFENTLICHKEIT − Von den Freunden Haus der Kunst, Haus der Kunst-Munich, 2015, Photo: Wilfried Petzi, Courtesy of the artist and Nathalie Obadia (Paris/Brussels), carlier|gebauer (Berlin), Lisson Gallery (London/New York)