ROCHECHOUART.- Rochechouart Museum of Contemporary Art is presenting Laure Prouvost: We Will Go Far (On ira loin), her first solo exhibition in a French museum. Winner of the prestigious Turner Prize in 2013, Laure Prouvost (born in 1978, lives between London and Antwerp) structures her work as independent story strands that weave and intersect from piece to piece. Her artistic output constantly returns to the narrative potential of objects, sound and cinematic tropes. Her immersive and carefully staged environments and videos explore the boundaries between fantasy and reality, leaving room to imagine new meanings within humorous mistakes and mistranslations.

These selected works underscore elements characteristic of her work since the mysterious disappearance of her grandfather, a conceptual artist who attempted to dig a tunnel from his living room all the way to North Africa. Laure Prouvost's most emblematic works can be seen here: Wantee (2013), set in her grandfather and grandmother’s living room; Visitor Center (2014), a sort of museum where visitors find themselves unintentionally paying their respects to the memory of her fictive grandfather and The Smoking Image (2015), a new commission made especially for Rochechouart Castle, inspired by her current interest in escapism and adolescence.

Her starting point has also often involved invented characters or aspects of geographical locations she has personally experienced (the USA in How to Make Money Religiously, Naples and its swarms of motorcycles in Polpomotorino, Rochechouart in The Smoking Image). The Smoking Image centers on teenagers living in the countryside experiencing their first amorous adventures—dreaming of escaping and striking out on their own—and for whom a scooter provides the path to freedom and independence. Visitors traverse the teenagers' world as they move through the castle roof gallery, finally reaching a "motorcycle-tapestry" which serves as a screen for the projection of the film shot in Rochechouart. The unpredictable imagery, fragments of texts and sounds disrupt expectations and trigger new sensations.

This exhibition We Will Go Far, and especially The Smoking Image, presents a new chapter in Prouvost's investigation into the fuzziness of identity, communication between individuals, the over-abundance of images and the desire to leave space for the imagination. Parallel to this exhibition, Laure Prouvost is working on another show on the closely related theme of escape, adolescence and cars at the Fahrenheit Foundation in Los Angeles (January 2016).