At Night This Water Turns Black

At Night This Water Turns Black is a sculptural work by Laure Prouvost that explores ideas of truth and fiction. The work’s simple, stark presence, makes us question its materiality and its expressed wish to be seen as something other than a mere object. This artwork work was part of For Forgetting, presented at the New Museum New York in 2014, which included a semicircular collaged mural, a multichannel video installation, scattered sculptural elements, and the film How to Make Money Religiously (2014). Centering on the problems as well as the possibilities of memory and forgetting, the piece addressed the arbitrary distinctions that can be ascribed to power and possession.

Laure Prouvost (born 1978, Lille, France; lives and works in London) makes complex installations involving video works with multi-layered narratives that conflate everyday realities with artistic fiction. Found objects, sculptures, paintings, drawings, and furniture, cohabit with signs and architectural assemblages, based on the themes and imagery in her films. Narrated in the artist’s soft, seductive voice, they are interspersed with spoken and written instructions that directly address the viewer. Prouvost lures the viewer-turned-participant into an abstracted, preverbal state of consciousness from which to rediscover the joy of learning language, words, and meanings.