LUX Artists' Moving Image

Into All That Is Here explores the notion of lust after times of darkness. Within her film, the artist continues the exploration of themes addressed in Wantee, a story linked to her grandfather. This time, Prouvost focuses on digging into the subconscious of this character, deep into his fantasies, like an insect or bird is attracted to the pollen and once the flower is reached it gets indulged with pleasure. The video depicts a warm and slimy atmosphere and a sensation of relief after a long search for darkness, giving the impression to the visitor that they have just penetrated a viscid, sweaty flower, till the images burn and disappear. (Diana Mereoiu, BIEFF 2018)

If It Was is a lo-fi intervention of Laure Prouvost’s playful and childlike subconscious into the museum space, reimagined here as a landscape for the visitor to give in to his/her impulses and desires. This democratization is rendered through Prouvost’s usual montage of free-association and haptic visuals, where inventiveness and mischievousness smooth out architectural corners, bring zumba lessons in the museum and touching is encouraged (kiss if you please!). The further we go down the rabbit-hole at the whispered nudging of the narrator, the faster associations build up, spiralling into a focal point of sublime. This deceivingly simple whirlwind of art-naif takes us to the backstage of artistic creation, giving enough rope to cerebrally and sensorially play with, until it pulls us toward the light of transcendence. (Andrei Tănăsescu, BIEFF 2017)

Screened in 2013 at Oberhausen, what at first seems to be the start of a SF movie (a ceiling filmed in a fixed shot, with a voice talking about a strange movement witnessed earlier) turns into a handy-cam video about the contrast between the normality of a hotel room and the abnormality of the society surrounding it. Beginning in Bethlehem and ending on the other side of the Separation Wall, DIRTY PICTURES builds a sample of meta-cinema reminiscent of Chris Marker, which relates the director’s own experience of the Israeli occupation of Palestine, brilliantly managing to trim down the monstrosity of history to human proportions. (Bianca Bănică, BIEFF)

Winner of the prestigious Turner Prize awarded by Tate Museum London, Laure Prouvost carefully plays with distance and intimacy in the surreal GRANDMA’S DREAM. Testing the limits between reality and fiction, the short subtly slips from the artist’s grandmother candid wishes into violent and sensual imagery of suppressed desires and woes. The impersonality of stock material contrasts with the naïve tenderness of a whispered voice-over. Juxtaposing and superimposing the images following a flow of consciousness logic creates a world in which the viewer gets lost in the whirlwind of silent frustrations and made-up biographies. (Diana Mereoiu, BIEFF 2014)