Winner of the Turner Prize, Laure Prouvost shows for the first time one of her most ambitious projects: a total work of art that encompasses syncopated video montages, large installations, light and sound, as well as a profusion of images and words that expand the imagination
Laure Prouvost (Croix-Lille, France, 1978), French artist winner of the Turner Prize in 2013. Among the most interesting figures of her generation, Prouvost tells complex stories with surreal humour, incorporating in her work the modalities of contemporary communication characterized by a proliferation and constant consumption of images.
The exhibition "GDM - Grand Dad's Visitor Center", curated by Roberta Tenconi, is a total work of art that brings together over fifteen works - installations, videos on monitors and projections, sculptures and objet trouvé - which together give life to a singular museum dedicated to the artist's grandfather, a stratified and evolving place, where architecture and content complement each other. Among the works presented: If It Was (2015), Into All That Is There (2015), We Know We Are Just Pixels (2014), Grandma's Dream (2013), Before, Before (2013), The Wanderer (God First Hairdresser / Gossip Sequence) (2013), I Need to Take Care of My Conceptual Granddad (2010), The Artist (2010) and Monolog (2009).
Laure Prouvost moves freely between different systems of representation, alternating fiction, non-sense, the imaginary and dream world on one side and the reality of everyday experience and human sensations on the other. Her projects combine a naive and bric-à-brac aesthetic, ordinary objects, labyrinthine installations and unstable architectures with an elaborate use of technology.
In his videos, he plays with the expressive codes of pop music, mass culture, cinema and the web, using an overabundance of images and resorting to written words and frenetic editing to alter the normal progress of the story. While the use of one's voice and the direct interaction with the spectator – who is called into question and often invited to perform actions – break the conventional distance between the audience and cinematographic fiction. The visitor, called to move, touch, dance and savor food, is involved with all the senses and is invited to expand the boundaries of his imagination and visual reality.
The theme of language is central to Laure Prouvost's works. The artist often transforms and questions the meaning of words, adapts a text into images, transposes a film into sculpture, to the point of generating linguistic confusion – even through a staggered translation from the mother tongue French to English, an idiom assimilated in the more than eighteen years spent in London.
I always deal with language. Living in England has led me to face misunderstandings and misunderstandings in communication. Everyone creates their own vision of things and sometimes it is these visions that push language beyond the literal meaning. (Laure Prouvost, 2012)
In “GDM – Grand Dad's Visitor Center” the exhibition itinerary develops in alienating environments and paradoxical atmospheres: a beauty salon, mirrored surfaces, inclined and angular rooms, dark and labyrinthine corridors, an area where tea is offered and a karaoke area. The exhibition alternates lights and sounds, images and written words, moments of quiet and contemplation with occasions of euphoria, in a seductive journey that envelops the visitor and requires his full participation.
The project is inspired by the alleged story of the grandfather of Laure Prouvost, a prolific conceptual artist and close friend of the famous German artist Kurt Schwitters, who digging a long tunnel between his studio and Africa, one day never returns, leaving the wife – the artist's grandmother – sole custodian of his works. In particular, the idea for the Visitor Center began in 2013 with the video installation Wantee, which features some sculptures created by his grandfather, but now transformed into household objects. The construction of the Visitor Center also refers to a broader reflection on the very meaning of the museum as a place dedicated to the conservation of works and their transmission into the future. In the video If It Was (2015) Prouvost questions its conventions: she imagines a place to dance and sing, where visitors are greeted warmly with a kiss, can do Zumba and caress the works. It is a place where the past, with its dark and dusty moments, takes on meaning in the present and the future, and where the public is transported "through the tunnel of history" to "other places".
One of the most significant works on display is The Wanderer (God First Hairdresser / Gossip Sequence) (2013), an installation that accurately reproduces the set of a hairdresser's shop and can be accessed to watch the video of the same name. The work is one of the seven parts that make up The Wanderer, a project that transforms the surreal interpretation of Franz Kafka's Metamorphoses into images and sculptures created by the Scottish artist Rory MacBeth who translated the book without knowing German and without the help of a vocabulary. Prouvost's version takes the confusion of the translation to an extreme, giving life to a bizarre narrative in which Gregor, the protagonist, gets lost in an absurd and literally upside down world, between bunkers and Cold War atmospheres and the shop for African hairstyles his mother.
The theme of identity is also substantial in the genesis of the character of the grandfather who appears in various works present in Pirelli HangarBicocca. Among these, the video that sees its first appearance I Need to Take Care of My Conceptual Grandad (2010), shot in London in the studio of the artist John Latham (1921-2006) to whom Prouvost had assisted for some years. Grandpa is also featured in the videos The Artist (2010),Wantee (2013) and Grandma's Dream (2013) – the latter shown inside Grandma's bedroom, a fantastical pink place where it's easier to dream.
Laure Prouvost (Croix-Lille, France, 1978), lives and works between Antwerp and London. She graduated in 2002 from Central St Martins College of Art and in 2010 from Goldsmith College, London. Since 2003 you have directed for ten years tank.tv, an online platform for art videos. Winner of the Turner Prize and the Max Mara Art Prize for Women in 2013, she has exhibited in various international institutions including: Haus der Kunst, Munich (2015); Musée départemental d'art contemporain, Rochechouart (2015); Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Berlin (2014); New Museum, New York (2014); Whitechapel Gallery, London (2013); Tate Britain, London (2013); Maramotti Collection, Reggio Emilia (2013); Morra Greco Foundation, Naples (2012); The Hepworth, Wakefield (2012).
In addition to the solo exhibition in Pirelli HangarBicocca, in 2016 an exhibition is underway in three stages at Le Consortium, Dijon (June - September 2016); MMK, Frankfurt (September – November 2016); Kunstmuseum Luzern, Lucerne (October 2016 – February 2017).
The Exhibition Program of Pirelli HangarBicocca
“GDM – Grand Dad's Visitor Center” is part of the exhibition program conceived by the Artistic Director Vicente Todolí for Pirelli HangarBicocca. The Laure Prouvost exhibition is presented in the Shed space where the programming will continue with the Rosa Barba exhibitions (May - September 2017) and the group show "Take Me (I'M Yours)" (October 2017 - February 2018). The exhibition “Situations” by Kishio Suga (September 30, 2016 – January 29, 2017) is presented simultaneously in the Navate space, while future exhibitions include Miroslaw Balka (March – July 2017), Lucio Fontana (September 2017 – January 2018), Matt Mullican (February – July 2018).
