Pictural stories and motorised sculptures

For fifteen years now, award ceremonies have been an integral part of the art KARLSRUHE fair experience (until 10 July). "It has always been an important concern of art KARLSRUHE to promote artists and galleries. One aspect of this commitment is the three award ceremonies, with which we would like to honour strong artistic positions and make them visible," says Ewald Karl Schrade, curator of art KARLSRUHE.

In addition to the Hans Platschek Prize for Art and Writing, the art KARLSRUHE Prize and the Loth Sculpture Prize were again awarded at this year's fair.

art KARLSRUHE Prize goes to Ambra Durante (Friese Gallery)

As experience has shown, the fourteenth art KARLSRUHE Prize remained exciting right to the end. Since 2008, the award, an alliance of the state and the city and endowed with a purchase budget of 15,000 euros, has honoured the best one-artist show on the one hand, and on the other, it serves to continually expand the art KARLSRUHE Collection.

This year, the young artist Ambra Durante (presented by Galerie Friese, Berlin) was able to join the list of prize winners. The draughtswoman, who was born in 2000 and has only been on the art market for a short time, is already attracting a lot of attention. At art KARLSRUHE, Durante convinced a jury of experts with her picture stories, which she immortalises on a wide variety of media. Thus, her works are created sometimes on paper, sometimes on glass and sometimes on train tickets.

A jury of experts chose the most convincing individual presentation from a total of 180 one-artist shows at the fair. The prize was awarded on Saturday (9 July) at 11 a.m. in the ARTIMA art Forum in the newly designed Hall 3. "Ambra Durante is perhaps the youngest artist at art KARLSRUHE. Her works assert themselves with humour and irony, igniting fireworks of figuration within which the figures repeatedly lose themselves," said laudator Dr. Stefanie Patruno, Director of the Städtische Galerie Karlsruhe, explaining the unanimous verdict.

The members of the jury were Dorothee Baer-Bogenschütz (art historian and journalist), Nikolai B. Forstbauer (author and journalist), Prof. Dr. Pia Müller-Tamm (Director of the Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe) and Dr. Stefanie Patruno (Director of the Städtische Galerie Karlsruhe).

Loth Sculpture Prize - donated by L-Bank - goes to Stefan Rohrer (Scheffel Gallery)

The prize, donated by L-Bank and endowed with 20,000 euros, is awarded by a jury of experts for the best sculpture space at art KARLSRUHE. Galerie Scheffel (Bad Homburg) and the artist Stefan Rohrer can be pleased about this year's award. The Loth Sculpture Prize is awarded equally to the gallery and the artist.

The prize was awarded by a jury of experts who justified their judgement as follows: "Traffic vehicles such as cars are central objects, cult objects of the 20th century. Rohrer transforms these concrete objects into abstract sculptures, vectors of space. In doing so, he convinces through the precise alienation effects and the powerful work on the material. He takes everyday objects, mostly vehicles, out of shape and into new forms. These transformations create humorous, surprising and powerful objects."

The Sculpture Prize is named after the artist Wilhelm Loth (1920 - 1993). In 1958, he was appointed head of a sculpture class at the Art Academy in Karlsruhe, where he worked as a professor from 1960 until his retirement in 1986.

The expert jury consisted of Alexander Heil (Wilhelm Loth estate, jury chair), Dr. Sebastian Baden (Schirn Frankfurt), Dr. Pia Dornacher (Museum Lothar Fischer, Neumarkt), Prof. Werner Pokorny (sculptor), Prof. Dr. Peter Weibel (ZKM Karlsruhe).

Hans Platschek Prize for Osmar Osten

The Hans Platschek Prize for Art and Writing, which has been awarded at art KARLSRUHE since 2008, kicked off the award ceremonies. Following Monika Baer (2021) and Helga Schmidhuber (2020), the Chemnitz-based artist Osmar Osten was presented with the award at the opening of the fair on 7 July.

This year's individual juror Dr Ulrike Lorenz explained her choice for Osten as follows: "My choice fell on Osmar Osten because the Chemnitz artist, with his post-dadaist painting and in his ironic short texts, has remained unimpressed on the trail of the absurdities of human existence and interpretive power for many years and beyond an overall social upheaval - a quick-witted contemporary with a philanthropic delight in the grotesque according to the motto: 'What does winning mean here, survival is everything'?"

In addition to prize money of 5,000 euros, Osten was able to enjoy a further honour: for the duration of the fair, his works will be presented at the Foundation's stand in dialogue with selected positions by Hans Platschek.