DENICOLAI & PROVOOST
tomorrow : trouble


Gleaning, disseminating, translating, disturbing, enchanting, permeabilising, underlining, digesting, associating, sharing, exchanging, pasting, blurring, crossing, uniting, acting, foregrounding.

So many verbs which could at one point or another contribute to a comprehension of the work of DENICOLAI & PROVOOST, a Brussels-based Italo-Belgian duo.

For their first monographic exhibition at LMNO we chose to show a group of seldom seen works which, assembled in novel ways, shed new light on their practice.

Magazine 02 hand-made by Yves Prévaux, 1999
The first few issues of the French magazine 02  were systematically entrusted to a different graphic designer. Ivo Provoost suggested producing the graphic design of Number 9 entirely by hand. Simona Denicolai contributed to one page in the issue. Interviews and advertisements were also done in ligne claire (?clear line?).  The original drawings for the entire magazine have been brought together here. That way you can experience a chapter in the history of contemporary art, reread through the hand of Ivo Provoost?s double, Yves Prévaux.

Os et  Crânes d?une Société, 2005
At a time when Belgacom embodied one of the legacies of a State owning monopolistic companies, our duo painted the logo of the firm on a heap of bones. They were thus questioning that economic toppling over, while addressing a veiled message to Marcel Broodthaers?s thighbone of a Belgian man.

Impressionism since 2006, 2006
Those drawings all start from graphic elements (charts, diagrams, etc.) that are supposed to explain the world to us with loads of statistical data, opinion polls etc., but the treatment is deliberately blurred, giving a less precise representation of the state of the world. An impressionistic vision of the data we are force-fed.  

Pace, 2014-2028, 2009
At the time of the second Gulf War, public spaces were decked with PACE flags. Here the artists imagine one of those flags worn out by the passage of time. One year per number of copies of this unique multiple.

More, 2014
The sculpture More is a trampoline table. It becomes a base for numerous seeds from our forests. The public are invited to grab them and plant them. So, with a possible element of surprise, the forest will be able to experience a new expansion.

Earthworm since 2001, 2001
(...) and particularly its relation with the context. The earthworm swallows its context, digests it and defecates it, in order to survive and to move in its environment. (?)    


Simona Denicolai and Ivo Provoost work under the name Denicolai & Provoost since 1997. Their artworks are included, for example, in the collections of Kanal Centre Georges Pompidou Brussels,  FRAC Ile de France, Haute Normandie, Pays de la Loire and Bourgone, BPS22, and at S.M.A.K. in Gent where they will present a huge exhibition in 2020.