Deep See Blue Surrounding You/Vois Ce Bleu Profond Te Fondre

Laure Prouvost’s project for the French Pavilion, entitled Deep See Blue Surrounding You/Vois Ce Bleu Profond Te Fondre, is structured around three main themes that provide reference points for the exhibition’s development. First of all, there is a reflection surrounding concepts of generations and identities, what links or distances us from each other: the eldest from the youngest, the neighbour from the stranger. Next comes the idea of disconnection, incomprehension and discrepancy, namely by means of an exploration of language and its appropriation, or misappropriation. Finally, tinged with utopia and surrealism, Laure Prouvost’s project is committed to representing an escapist journey, both tangible and imaginary, towards an ideal elsewhere. The exhibition takes the form of an invitation to melt into a liquid and tentacular universe amongst the different unveiled and shared realities, which intermingle here. The project challenges the idea of the representation of a fluid and globalised world, made of exchanges, connectivity and discrepancies. In the continuation of her artistic practice, which intertwines representations of desire, oneirism, and a fantasised description of nature, Laure Prouvost particularly focuses on language, wordplay and translation. The attention given to her environment and to the natural and human elements that surround her calls to mind the immersive quality of her films, installations, objects, drawings and tapestries. The exhibition echoes the expression of “liquid modernity”, coined by the Polish sociologist Zygmunt Bauman to define a postmodern world governed by immediacy and communication, which erodes the anchored ties between people and bodies by revealing the fragility of a society based on individualism and constant change. The corner-stone of Laure Prouvost’s artistic project for the French Pavilion is a fictional film. It takes the form of an initiatory journey, a joyous saga filmed over the course of a road trip through France — from the Parisian suburbs to the north of France, from the Palais du Facteur Cheval to the Mediterranean Sea — and finally to Venice. The film, which is full of dialogue and idioms, is based on a script co-written by the artist and various contributors, in French and English with some Italian, Arabic or Dutch passages. The dialogues are performed by a dozen of characters of different ages and backgrounds, with specific performance skills: magic, dance, music, etc. A sculptural installation in situ enriches and develops the themes of the film, inside and outside the pavilion, using typical processes of the artist’s practise, such as leftover objects from the film, resin, clay, glass, plants or water vapour. Performances punctuate the life of the pavilion, interacting with the architecture and objects on display. The very context of Venice, a floating city built on water and by water, a city of facade and backstage, appears as a source of inspiration for the concept of the project, and can be found at the heart of both the film and the installation. “A trip to our unconscious. With the help of our brains in our tentacles, we dig tunnels to the past and the future towards Venice. Let’s follow the light.” - Laure Prouvost Laure Prouvost was born in Croix-Lille (France) in 1978, before establishing herself in London, where she studied at Central Saint Martins, and then at Goldsmiths College. The winner of the 2013 Turner Prize, she currently lives and works between London, Antwerp, and a caravan in the Croatian desert. Using video, drawing, tapestry, ceramics, photography, performance, and above all, language, Laure Prouvost creates immersive installations which plunge the viewer into a state of personal and collective introspection. Words, images, memories, the five senses, everything which appears tangible and reliable is inverted by the fantastical nature of the ambiguous narratives introduced by the artist. Her relationship to language, which is mischievous and full of humour, is informed by her own experience and the gulf between everyday spoken language, in England, and her mother tongue. By means of this back-and-forth, the artist questions our cultural history and what remains of it over the course of movements and generations. She has already had three solo exhibitions in French institutions: Ring, Sing and Drink for Trespassing at the Palais de Tokyo, in Paris (2018); Dropped here and then, to live, leave it all behind at the Consortium, Dijon (2016) and We will go far, at the Musée Départemental d’Art Contemporain de Rochechouart (2015). Her work has also been shown in France in a number of exhibitions. Some of the most recent ones include: and You Are My Petrol, My Drive, My Dream, My Exhaust at the Studio des Acacias, Paris; Persona Grata at MAC/VAL, Vitry-sur-Seine, and the Musée national de l’histoire de l’immigration, Paris; Performance TV at Maison des Arts Bernard Anthonioz, Nogent-sur-Marne and Mademoiselle at Crac Occitanie in 2018. Abroad, the M HKA in Anvers will present the biggest solo exhibition of her work to date, from the 8th of February to the 19th of May 2019 (AM-BIG-YOU-US LEGSICON). Previously, her work has been exhibited individually at the Walker Art Centre, Minneapolis and the Bass Museum, Miami, FL in the United States (2017); at SALT Galata, Istanbul, in Turkey (2017); at Fahrenheit, Los Angeles, in the United States (2016); Kunstmuseum Luzern, in Switzerland (2016); Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan, in Italy (2016); Red Brick Art Museum, Beijing, in China (2016); Haus Der Kunst, Munich, in Germany (2015); New Museum, New York, in the United States (2014); Laboratorio Arte Alameda, Mexico City, in Mexico (2014); amongst others. Major exhibitions in which she has participated include Give Up The Ghost at Contemporary Art Centre (CAC), Vilnius, in Lithuania on the occasion of the 13th Baltic Biennale; Speak at the Serpentine Gallery, London, in the United Kingdom (2017) and Practising habits of the day at the ICA, in Singapore (2016). Laure Prouvost is represented by Galerie Nathalie Obadia (Paris/Brussels), Carlier Gebauer (Berlin) and Lisson Gallery (London/New York). Martha Kirszenbaum (born in 1983 in Vitry-sur-Seine, France) is a curator and writer based in Paris and Los Angeles. She graduated from Sciences-Po in Paris and Columbia University in New York with an M.A. in Political History and Cultural Studies. Kirszenbaum is the curator for the French Pavilion of the 58th Venice Biennale, represented by Laure Prouvost. She founded and directed Fahrenheit, an exhibition space and residency program in Los Angeles (2014 – 2017). She previously acted as the Associate Curator at the Kunsthalle Mulhouse (2014), curator-in-residence at the Belvedere Museum/21er Haus in Vienna, Austria (2012) and at the Centre for Contemporary Art, in Warsaw, Poland (2010). She also worked at the New Museum in New York, USA (2008 – 2010), at the Photography Department of Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, France (2007) and the Media Department of MoMA in New York, United States (2006 – 2007). Kirszenbaum has organised exhibitions, screenings, performances and talks at renowned international institutions such as the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, United Kingdom; the Palais de Tokyo, Fondation Ricard and Kadist in Paris, France; the Astrup Fearnley Museet in Oslo and the Kunstall Stavanger, in Norway; the Beirut Art Center, in Lebanon; 221A in Vancouver, Canada; the Pejman Foundation in Tehran, Iran; the Marrakech Biennale, in Morocco; the Istanbul Biennale, in Turkey; LACE in Los Angeles and the Austrian Cultural Forum, New York, in the United States. She is a regular contributor to Flash Art, Mousse, Cura and Kaleidoscope among other publications, and has led seminars at UCLA, Université Paris VIII, and Parsons in Paris. She was on the jury for the Estonian Pavilion of the 57th Venice Biennale, for the Zoom Art Award, for the Art Award of the City of Marseille and for the Jan Van Eyck Academie, in Maastricht, Netherlands. She also serves on the selection committee of Art Brussels, in Belgium. Martha Kirszenbaum is currently in residence at the Cité internationale des arts.

Visit

Giardini

Venice, NY