art KARLSRUHE Prize awarded to artist Mona Radziabari and Galerie Michael Sturm
At the fifteenth art KARLSRUHE Prize, as experience shows, the suspense remained until the very end: on the occasion of the fair's twentieth anniversary, Mona Radziabari was delighted to receive the award.
This year, Galerie Michael Sturm (Stuttgart) is dedicating a One-Artist-Show to the Iranian artist, a solo presentation on at least 25 square metres of exhibition space. A total of 180 One-Artist-Shows were up for selection this year.
Insights into the art of the individual
The one-artist shows enable visitors to the fair to take a closer look at the work of individual artists. Galerie Michael Sturm, for example, presents several series of Radziabari's works in Hall 2.
Some of Radziabari's works deal with political and social situations. These works include the series "Pointless Holes" and "Who Cares". In "Who Cares", for example, she uses newspapers from her home country and uses them as source material for her painting. In 2015, Radziabari moved to Vienna. This emigration had a profound influence on her new artworks. The artist started her new series of paintings "Less is enough" during the pandemic. Unable to visit Iran and her family, the artist began to search for those very places with the help of Google Maps and developed abstract paintings from them, the presentation of which has now been awarded the art KARLSRUHE prize.
An alliance of city and country
The art KARLSRUHE Prize, an alliance of the state and the city, endowed with a purchase budget of 15,000 euros, has been honouring the best one-artist show at the fair since 2008. In addition, the prize serves to continually expand the art KARLSRUHE Collection, which is housed in the Städtische Galerie in Karlsruhe.
A jury of experts selected the most convincing individual presentation from a total of 180 one-artist shows at the fair. The prize was awarded on Saturday (6 May) at 5 p.m. in the ARTIMA art Forum in Hall 4. "The artist convinced us with the quiet weapons of her conceptual art, but also with a coherent overall presentation of the one-artist show set up by Galerie Michael Sturm, which installed different groups of works consisting of paintings, painted-over newspaper collages, photographs and assemblages," said jury spokesperson Stefanie Patruno, explaining the verdict.
Members of the jury were Dorothee Baer-Bogenschütz (art historian and journalist), Nikolai B. Forstbauer (author and journalist), Christiane Lenhardt (journalist), Anja Casser (Director of the Badischer Kunstverein Karlsruhe.) and Stefanie Patruno (Director of the Städtische Galerie Karlsruhe).
art KARLSRUHE honours strong positions
For sixteen years now, award ceremonies have been an integral part of the art KARLSRUHE programme. The Hans Platschek Prize for Art and Writing was awarded last Thursday to the Berlin artist Cornelia Schleime. This was followed by the Loth Sculpture Prize endowed with 20,000 euros - donated by the L-Bank - for the Albert Baumgarten Gallery and the artist Klaus Münch. The trio of award ceremonies is rounded off by the art KARLSRUHE prize for the best one-artist show.
