They Are Waiting for You presents Laure Prouvost’s absorbing moving image installations in which she conflates reality with fiction and art with everyday life. Often narrated in the artist’s voice, and interspersed with spoken and written instructions that directly address the viewer, her works confound expectations through a rapid-fire succession of moving images and sounds. Combining painting, sculpture, and found objects, Prouvost draws us into a shifting terrain where we lose our grasp of words and meanings, while the objects around us seem to gain theirs.
Laure Prouvost’s artistic output consistently returns to themes of escape into unfamiliar worlds or imaginings of unexpected alternative environments. A strong narrative impulse propels her practice, resulting in immersive, trans-medial installations with interwoven story lines that combine fiction and reality. Her videos, installations, paintings and tapestries unhinge commonplace and expected connections between language, image, and perception. Stepping away from traditional linear narratives, the artist crafts sensual environments laden with playful mistranslation that open a space for the viewer to grapple with the unstable relationship between imagination and reality.
Prouvost (b. 1978, Croix-Lille, France) lives and works in London, U.K. and Antwerp, Belgium. Recent solo exhibitions include: Softer and rounder so as to shine through your smooth marble, SALT Galata, Istanbul (2017); the wet wet wanderer, Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam (2017); Laure Prouvost, wot hit talk, Laznia Centre for Contemporary Art, Gdańsk (2017); And she will say: hi her, ailleurs, to higher grounds…, Kunstmuseum Luzern (2016); GDM-Grandad Visitor Center, Pirelli Hangar Bicocca, Milan (2016); all behind, we’ll go deeper, deep down and she will say:, MMK, Frankfurt (2016); Dropped here and then, to live, leave it all behind, FRAC/ Consortium Dijon (2016); A Way To Leak, Lick, Leek, Fahrenheit, Los Angeles (2016); We Will Go Far, Musée Départemental d’Art Contemporain de Rochechouart (2015), It, Heat, Hit, e-flux, New York (2015), Der Öffentlichkeit — Von Den Freunden Haus Der Kunst, Haus der Kunst, Munich (2015), For Forgetting, New Museum, New York (2014). Provoust received the Max Mara Art Prize for Women in 2011 and the Turner Prize in 2013.