LAURE PROUVOST TO PRESENT INAUGURAL COMMISSION FOR LIGHT HALL IN NORWAY’S NEW NATIONAL MUSEUM

Laure Prouvost, winner of the 2013 Turner Prize, presents the first site-specific installation for the Light Hall in Norway’s new National Museum. For this exhibition she has created a universe of contrasts.

Laure Prouvost – Above Front Tears Oui Float
5 November 2022–12 February 2023
The National Museum, Light Hall, Oslo, Norway.

Press viewing will be held November 2 at 12:00. Artist Laure Prouvost, curator Eva Klerck Gange, director Karin Hindsbo and director of collections Stina Högkvist will be present. Media is asked to register their attendence to olefa@nasjonalmuseet.no within 12:00 November 1.

One moment Laure Prouvost confronts us with global warming´s effects and the migration of humans and birds, and the next moment she invites us to float unfettered above the clouds and cut through frontiers.

The art of Laure Prouvost is rich and shot through with life-affirming humour and deep seriousness. In the new commission developed specifically for the Light Hall, we step out of the darkness of a tunnel into a desolate misty landscape. We are above the clouds, floating into a place where birds soar, above the ground as bodies in levitation.

Laure Prouvost is the first artist to receive the Fredriksen Commission for Norway’s new National Museum. The Fredriksen Commission is an ambitious commissioning program. The series of five biennial commissions over 10 years will enable large-scale works by leading international artists to be seen in Norway. Each artist will be invited to create a work or an installation for the Light Hall, exploring the possibilities of this unique space.

- We are excited to welcome Laure Prouvost into the Light Hall as the first solo exhibitor, and thankful to the Fredriksen Commission for making it possible to supplement our collection display with world-class site-specific exhibitions, says The National Museum’s director Karin Hindsbo.

Above Front Tears Oui Float is an immersive installation containing film, sound, performance, sculptures, textile and text, blurring the boundaries between fiction and reality. Laure Prouvost has adopted the Light Hall's powerful format and created a world of contrasts. Occupying two of the three immense halls, the artist´s installation tickles our senses and emotions and plays with our experience of gravity. Pulsating lights, hybrid glass birds and fountains are part of this landscape.

The exhibition has an underlying seriousness, but its considerations for nature, environmental challenges, migration and the pandemic are conveyed with warmth and absurd humour.The hybrid, both in text and work, is important in Laure Prouvost’s oeuvre. In the exhibition, Grandma, one of the main protagonists in Prouvost’s artistic universe, grows a pair of wings and transforms into a human bird. A similar motif is found in a fountain assembled by glass and stone depicting a bird, a woman and a fish dissolving into one single creature.

Birds and fish, central symbols in religion, become the joints between human and nature, and express the installation’s historical connections to mythology and surrealism. Growing on histories, new poetic expressions and visual images are created, as Grandma flies above our heads, weaving the world.

In a monumental video installation, Grandma has fulfilled her dream of soaring in the air like a bird, enjoying the feeling of weightlessness high up in the clouds, looking at the world from a bird’s eye view. Grandma’s dreams and visions form the basis for the exhibition.

The title of the exhibition, Above Front Tears Oui Float, is typical of Prouvost’s play with language, where French and English are often intertwined. The title is an invitation to open up limits and categories.

Laure Prouvost
Laure Prouvost was born in Lille, France (1978) and is currently based in Brussels. She received her BFA from Central St Martins, London in 2002 and studied towards her MFA at Goldsmiths College, London. She also took part in the LUX Associate Programme. Laure Prouvost received the MaxMara Art Prize for Women in 2011 and received the prestigious Turner Prize in 2013. She represented France at the Venice Biennale in 2019.

Current exhibitions include:

‘We, On The Rising Wave’, Busan Biennale, South Korea (2022); ‘ARS22’ at the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Helsinki, Finland. Recent solo exhibitions include: ‘Deep Travel Ink’, Atelier Hermès, Seoul, South Korea (2022); ‘Our elastic arm hold in tight through the claouds’ at Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen, Denmark (2021); ‘Re-dit-en-un-in-learning CENTER’ at Lisson Gallery London (2020); ‘Melting into one another ho hot chaud it heating dip’, Kunsthalle Lissabon, Lisbon, Portugal (2020); ‘Deep See Blue Surrounding You / Vois Ce Bleu Profond Te Fondre’, Les Abattoirs, Toulouse, France, LAM - Lille métropole, Villeneuve d’Ascq, France (2020), and Bonnefanten Museum, Maastricht, Netherlands (2021); ‘AM-BIG-YOU-US LEGSICON’, M HKA - Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp, Belgium (2019); Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France (2018); BASS Museum, Miami, FL, USA (2018); ‘They Are Waiting for You’, Performance for stage at the McGuire Theatre, Minneapolis, MN, USA (2018). Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan, Italy (2016); Haus Der Kunst, Munich, Germany (2015); New Museum, New York, NY, USA (2014); Laboratorio Arte Alameda, Mexico City, Mexico (2014); Max Mara Art Prize for Women, Whitechapel Gallery, London, UK and Collezione Maramotti, Reggio Emilia, Italy

(2013); ‘Laure Prouvost / Adam Chodzko’ as part of ‘Schwitters in Britain’, Tate Britain, London, UK (2013);

Prouvost represented France at the 58th International Art Biennial Venice, May-November 2019 and was included in ‘NIRIN,’ the 22nd Biennale of Sydney (2020). June 2019 saw the artist’s first public commission in the UK through Transport for London’s Art on the Underground.

Laure Prouvost, presents the first site specific installation for the Light Hall in Norway’s new National Museum.

The Fredriksen Commission
The Fredriksen Commission is an exhibition series that invites established, international artists to create a work or an installation especially for the Light Hall and to explore the possibilities of this unique space. In the Fredriksen Commission, the National Museum will offer powerful art experiences with international artists who have previously had little exposure in the Nordic region. The exhibitions will take place every two years.

The Fredriksen Commission is a part of the partnership between The National Museum and sisters Kathrine and Cecilie Fredriksen.