Laure Prouvost: C'est l'est not ouest

The novelty of 2016 edition of Jindřich Chalupecký Award was the launch of the tradition of an international guest who will introduce his or her project in connection with the exhibition of the finalists. It will be a distinctive artist whose work resonates with the current events on the Czech art scene, although it may not have been introduced here so far. The guest of 2016 is Laure Prouvost, the first French artist, based in London and Antwerp, to win UK’s prestigious Turner Prize in 2013. Her first solo show in Prague was prepared in collaboration with Stateof Concept, Athens, curated by iLiana Fokianakiand Karina Kottová. 

The installation Prouvost introduced at the Trade Fair Palace takes the viewers to a jungle of (moving) images and textual signs pointing out the fluctuating meanings arising between the individual exhibition components and the viewer's imagination. In the video Drilling Brain (2015), the hands of the artist almost physically touch the viewer’s head, drilling through it and pushing his or her body and perception down. Motives on the borderland between phantoms and flashes of reality emerge among ficus leaves and surreal recesses. At certain moments, the depiction of the persisting refugee crisis appears; then the scene fades onto a more abstracted, universal level. The video Into All That Is Here (2015), the focal point of the installation, is an invitation to go even deeper, to one’s subconscious, sexuality, fear, playfulness and realization of the ambivalence that surrounds today’s existence. The video installation We Know We Are Just Pixels (2014), on the contrary, remains trapped in the digital sphere from which the protagonists cannot escape. The exhibition thus becomes are capitulation with many variables, one that is almost urgently physical and concrete and at the same time elusive and volatile.

Laure Prouvost (b. 1981, Lille) lives and works between Antwerp and the municipality of Kyoto, near iLiana Fokianaki’s hometown. She holds an MFA from Goldsmiths College, London (2010) and a BFA from Central St Martins, London (2002). Selected solo exhibitions include: A Way to Leak, Lick, Leek, Fahrenheit, Los Angeles (2016); Laure Prouvost: It, Heat, Hit, e-flux, New York (2015); For Forgetting, New Museum, New York (2014); Max Mara ArtPrize for Women, Whitechapel Gallery, London (2013); Display: Laure Prouvost, Contemporary Art Society, London (2013); The Wanderer, CCA Glasgow, Glasgow (2012); Frieze Projects, Frieze Art Fair, London (2011). Selected group exhibitions include: Stanze/Rooms, from the Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Collection, me Collectors Room, Berlin(2014); Mirrorcity, Hayward Gallery, London (2014); Summer Exhibition 2014, The RoyalAcademy, London (2014); Turner Prize 2013 Exhibition, CCA Derry~Londonderry, Londonderry (2013); Assembly: A Survey of Recent Artists’ Film and Video in Britain 2008–2013, Tate Britain, London (2013); Soundworks, Institute of Contemporary Art, London(2012); Time Again, Sculpture Center, New York (2011). Among others, she was the recipient of the Turner Prize 2013 and the Max Mara Prize for Women 2011.

Photo: Peter Fabo

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