Plot
Point
TIM
VAN LAERE GALLERY 26
April - 15 June 2007
Verlatstraat 23 - 25, 2000 Antwerp,
Belgium T +32 (0)3 257 14 17 F +32 (0)3 257
14 25
vanlaere.art@pandora.be www.timvanlaeregallery.com
After playing on the spectators’ emotions
in Cinematics, his previous exhibition, Nicolas Provost takes us for
an apnoeic journey with Plot Point. If the sensory shock remains an
essential part of the process, this time Provost also triggers our
storytelling skills. Intuition is at the core of these works of art
both in the way they are conceived and in the way they are invested
by the viewer. Never truly giving away their essence and meaning,
the films are mystery puzzles leaving scattered clues and teasing
our darkest imagination and impulses. Real and well-known American
cop land with its howling police cars, uniforms, ambulances, and crowded
streets, very soon turns into a perfect filmic scenery questioning
the boundaries of reality and fiction, but also narrative codes of
cinema (tension curve, climax, plot point), playing with our expectations
and leaving the mystery unravelled (Plot Point). The reassuring world
of multiplied cinematographic kisses is shattered by a stroboscopic
effect that plunges and looses us into the dizzying vertigo of the
embrace where, as often in Provost’s cinema, love becomes a
passionate battle in which monsters are finally unmasked (Gravity).
In contrast with the turmoil of the background fireworks, the encounter
of a couple seems to be tragically suspended in time, as if the characters
were walking under water, their movements fettered by the weight of
the matter, reaching for the viewer’s subconscious cinematic
and emotional memory (The Divers). Finally letting go of realist constraints,
and going back to the mirror-images of some of Provost’s famous
previous works, we are finally diving into a cosmic ocean of ever
metamorphosing baroque circumvolutions in which our minds try to capture
reassuring forms before letting the ghostly demons blur our vision
(Suspension). At the core of all those enthralling images is cinema
itself, in its essential definition - made of altered times and movements,
creating a new vision through intense sensations.
If the films can be considered as autonomous bubbles, indisputable
links also emerge from their display in the Tim Van Laere Gallery;
as indicated by the succession of titles, from Plotpoint to Gravity,
The Divers and finally Suspension, we are physically involved into
a deep exploration progressively gliding away from realist and familiar
landscapes and falling into undisclosed territories. Playing once
again with different mediums, Provost adds, with the presence of the
photographed stills in the gallery, another dimension to the mystery
of the films - new petrified particles of unsolved enigmas. All questions
are irrelevant to our aroused senses and vision entirely rapt by the
beauty and power of Provost’s dark poetry.
Muriel Andrin
"Plot Point",2007
videostill,lambdaprint,framed behind glass -78,5x133,5cm - ed.of 3+1a.p.
"Aftermath",2007
videostill,lambdaprint,framed behind glass -78,5x133,5cm - ed.of 3+1a.p.
"Foreshadow",2007
videostill,lambdaprint,framed behind glass -78,5x133,5cm - ed.of 3+1a.p.
"Suspension",2007
Video, Black and white, 6' - ed.of 5+1a.p.
"Spirits
United ",2007
videostill,lambdaprint,framed behind glass -78,5x133,5cm - ed.of 3+1a.p.
"Frankly
my dear",2007
videostill,lambdaprint,framed behind glass -78,5x133,5cm - ed.of 3+1a.p
Induction",2007
videostill,lambdaprint,framed behind glass -78,5x133,5cm - ed.of 3+1a.p.
"The
Divers ",2007
Video, Color, 7' - ed.of 5+1a.p. & Videostill,lambdaprint,framed
behind glass -78,5x133,5cm - ed.of 3+1a.p.
"Gravity",2007
Video, Color, 6' - ed.of 5+1a.p.
"Plot
Point ",2007
HD Video, Color, 15' - ed.of 5+1a.p.
