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Exhibition Laure Prouvost in De Pont Museum shows boundless imagination

This spring, admire an immersive and immersive exhibition by Laure Prouvost at Museum De Pont. In her latest exhibition, Prouvost takes you into her own surreal, absurdist and poetic universe. Be guided through a dark and dystopian landscape to a bright, hopeful sky. "IN THE MIST OF IT ALL, ABOVE FRONT TEARS" connects social engagement with boundless imagination through video, sculpture, performance, textiles and text. In her own unique way, she delivers a hopeful and liberating message on topics such as ecology, the female body and migration.

Prouvost transforms the halls, wool lofts and great hall of De Pont with this exhibition. In a dark room, the audience moves among heavy oil pipes protruding from the ground, creating shiny, brown pools. A worm-shaped creature swarms up along one pipe. For a moment, all hope seems lost. Or are these signs of a new beginning? Prouvost gives no definitive answer, but takes you by the hand through the world of Grandma, one of the recurring characters in her oeuvre. In a monumental, meters-high video installation, Grandma is given wings and her dream of being able to fly is fulfilled. 

Laure Prouvost, Drinking One Another Fountain, 2022, collection De Pont museum [photo Annar Bjørgli]

A magical universe and terrifying enchantment

De Pont's intimate cloud lofts provide space for several videos in which Prouvost appeals to all the senses; you can almost smell the images. Via the body of an immense bird you then enter a magical universe, where the ceiling opens up to offer a view of a large cloud. For a moment you seem to be floating around yourself. In this limitless space, birds can fly forever, while fish squirt water into each other's mouths in an infinite circular motion. But the cloud comes down, and in successive spaces, an array of brilliant debris floats around. The attractive enchantment becomes simultaneously terrifying.

A new reality

Every time you think you are getting a grip on the world you are entering, Prouvost shifts reality. For example, through a wicker basket in the exhibition space, she catapults the visitor into De Pont's lush courtyard garden. Nymph-like women dance around you and approach you one by one, whispering poetic texts in your ear. Humorous and serious, dark and light, fiction and reality: in Prouvost's artistic universe full of contrasts, she confronts us with the consequences of global warming and migration of people and birds - and invites us to float unhindered above the clouds and break through borders.

Speech confusion

The expansion of consciousness runs as a thread through Prouvost's oeuvre. Language is essential to her. Prouvost sees language as an ingrained system with which we are far from always able to name all our perceptions and feelings. She is also - as a Frenchwoman who studied in England and now lives in Brussels - fascinated by the confusion that can arise from translations. For example, in the title of the exhibition "front tears" you can read "tears" or "tears," but you can also pronounce it "frontiers.

The exhibition IN THE MIST OF IT ALL, ABOVE FRONT TEARS by Laure Prouvost can be admired from February 24 until August 18 in museum De Pont. More information can be found on www.depont.nl! 

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