GHENT.- Simona Denicolai (b. 1972, Milan) and Ivo Provoost (b. 1974, Diksmuide) have been working as the artistic duo Denicolai & Provoost since the mid-1990s. This exhibition offers a comprehensive overview of the artistic strategies they have developed as a way of questioning reality.

With this solo exhibition, S.M.A.K. is hosting the first museum presentation of the animated film ‘HELLO, ARE WE IN THE SHOW?’. As a contemporary sequel to the 16th-century tapestry series ‘Les Chasses de Maximilien’ (The Hunts of Maximilian), the film takes us past a number of scenes in the Sonian forest. Nature is not idealised, but placed in a critical perspective that reveals the interaction and interdependence between all life forms. This recent work is a co-production with S.M.A.K. and, on the occasion of the exhibition, has been reworked into an impressive installation that occupies the entire main gallery on the first floor. The film’s storyboard has been part of the S.M.A.K. collection since 2016.

The observational gaze, as seen in the animated film, underwrites Denicolai & Provoost’s entire oeuvre. From a Spanish fish market to a Dutch commune or a working-class neighbourhood in Ghent: the artists constantly move within diverse communities and question how the social order is established and might be rethought. Many of their projects begin with just a scenario that connects people, objects and stories. In the further artistic process, the artists are guided by the synergies and collaborations that emerge, and keep to a purely mediating role. From the local context, these exchanges touch upon themes such as solidarity, identity and citizenship.

Denicolai & Provoost’s work is closely linked to everyday life and compels us to see it differently. Their working method is called ‘sculptural action’ and comprises actions that intervene with elements in their existing contexts, either disconnecting and rearranging them, or connecting them in an alternative way. In so doing, they modulate, as it were, environments and situations, or, more broadly, society. The artworks thus created expose the underlying patterns of norms, values and boundaries that regulate our everyday lives and aim to disrupt the routine behaviour these provoke.

The process-oriented working method of Denicolai & Provoost not only results in videos, performances and installations, but also in models or studies that may never be executed. The exhibition invites us to read these diverse forms in an equal way. After all, they all draw meaning from Denicolai & Provoost’s characteristic approach to art as an active concept. What can art do? How can art be deployed for sustainable change? Can an emancipated public also participate? Starting from this questions, Denicolai & Provoost’s artworks move effortlessly between the intimate, the public and the museum space, which undermines their status. This is also felt in the exhibition. Whether we merely look at the artworks or, for example, also choose to plant or eat them. Comment voir la même autre chose?

During the exhibition, MOREpublishers will publish a facsimile of Denicolai & Provoost’s entire website as an edition.