Nicolas Provost: Long Live the New Flesh

With digital prowess and deft editing, Belgian filmmaker Nicolas Provost transforms clichéd Hollywood scenes into something altogether more alluring, mysterious, and occasionally, more grotesque. Long Live the New Flesh (2009) takes this notion to extremes, melting the pixels of canonical horror films (The Shining, The Exorcist, and others) into new forms, effectively creating new kinds of monsters. Gravity (2007) considers the trope of romance fulfilled in a strobe-like succession of seemingly endless Hollywood kissing scenes. Provost based two of his latest works, Stardust and Storyteller (both 2010), in Las Vegas, imbuing banal shots of life on the strip and inside its casinos with a sense of the uncanny. On the whole, Provost’s art attests to the malleability of the cinematic images that remain ingrained in our memory, but also just out of reach. (Kelly Schindler)
Nicolas Provost, 2007-2010, Belgium, multiple formats, ca. 75 min + discussion.