Laure Prouvost at Fahrenheit

Artist: Laure Prouvost

Exhibition title: A Way To Leak, Lick, Leek

Curated by: Martha Kirszenbaum

Venue: Fahrenheit, Los Angeles, US

Date: January 31 – April 9, 2016

Photography: Jeff McLane, all images copyright and courtesy of the artist, Fahrenheit, Los Angeles and MOT International, London & Brussels

«When we move by night at the speed of desire
With you at the wheel my limit goes higher
Just turn me on, you turn me on
You are my petrol, my drive, my dream, my exhaust »

Fahrenheit is delighted to present A Way to Leak, Lick, Leek, Laure Prouvost’s first solo presentation in Los Angeles. Drawing from desire, oneirism, and a fantasized depiction of nature, Prouvost’s immersive films and installations challenge the relationship between language and understanding through complex stories and surreal moments with her unusual approach to cinematic conventions and imagery. Prouvost’s attention to her environment, as well as the natural and human elements surrounding her, comprise the primary material of her work.

A Way to Leak, Lick, Leek is the outcome of Prouvost’s residency at Fahrenheit completed in the spring of 2015, and is the counterpart of the artist’s project presented last year at Musée départemental d’art contemporain de Rochechouart in France. The exhibition results in a site-specific installation of films, sculptures, and drawings utilizing elemental material found within Los Angeles—flora, fauna, smells, sounds, abandoned objects, and the vertiginous light of L.A.

Laure Prouvost constructs an immersive environment in which her works become central ploys in a scenario that explores the boundaries of fantastic and urban escapism. Her series of drawings and films reflect a delineated urban experience made of driving in L.A. and breathing in petrol and plastic smells.

For her main installation, Prouvost coated the floor of the gallery space with blue resin, ornamenting its surface with shattered technological junk, abandoned tropical trees, floating pineapples, and branches of tumble weeds—an apocalyptic vision reminiscent of a private pool the morning after a wild night. In her new video, Lick in The Past, filmed last spring in Downtown Los Angeles, she employs tropes both derived from and challenging the filmic languages of cinema and art. Adolescent Angelinos and their collective performance constitute an amateur form, on an improvisational level, acting in a parking lot to the sound of an original hip-hop track specially composed by L.A.-based producer WYNN for the exhibition. These stars of the outtake bring corrupt reveries to life through humor and mistranslations.

Credits: Ciarán Wood (master mind), Maud Gyssels (Belgian brain), Sofia Arreguin (resin queen)
Soundtrack: WYNN (production), Guillermo Brown (voice), Sal Chyamolonskas (rusty watermaker), Laure Prouvost and Tex Royale (lyrics)

Laure Prouvost was born in1978 in Lille, France. She lives and works in Antwerp, Belgium. Solo exhibitions include We Would Be Floating Away from the Dirty Past at the Haus Der Kunst, Munich (2016), We Will Go Far at Musée Départemental d’Art Contemporain de Rochechouart, Rochechouart (2015), It, Heat, Hit at e-flux, New York (2015), Dear dirty dark drink drift down deep droll (in der dole) at carlier | gebauer, Berlin (2015), Der Öffentlichkeit — Von Den Freunden Haus Der Kunst at Haus der Kunst, Munich (2015), For Forgetting at New Museum, New York (2014), From Wantee to Some Signs at Extra City Kunsthal, Antwerp (2014); Laure Prouvost / Adam Chodzko at Tate Britain, London (2013); All These Things Think Link at Flat Time House, London (2010); It, Heat, Hit at Art Now Lightbox, Tate Britain, London (2010). Group shows include The Great Acceleration at the Taipei Biennial (2014); Portraits d’Intérieurs at the Nouveau Musée National de Monaco; and Assembly: A Survey of Recent Artists’ Film and Video in Britain 2008–2013 at Tate Britain, London (2013). Provoust received the Max Mara Art Prize for Women in 2011 and the Turner Prize in 2013.