sometime ago i posted on pinchuk art center and its future generation art prize. guess what!? a romanian won the special prize!
he was born in 1980, studied at the university of bucharest (european cultural studies) and the institute for architecture (anthropology of space) and currently lives and works in bucharest.
robert storr, one of the jury members, had the following to say on the subject:
with disarming even deceptive simplicity mircea nicolae tells a complex multi-levelled tale of the coming together and coming apart of his family against the background of the coming together and coming apart of socialism in romania after the second world war. using documentary film footage, snapshots, architectural photos, his mother’s shoes and pictures and models of vernacular kiosks of modernist design, he gives us moving as well as critical images and symbols of the interweaving or private life and history, the personal and political.
you can vote for him and check the pieces he showed here and turn to page 14 of the information leaflet for more on mircea. the work he exhibited featured four models of kiosks and a 55-minute film on the evolution of his family as well as in the evolution of the romanian society in general.
artists who applied: 6,000. artists the jury chose: 21.
the main prize was awarded to the brazilian cinthia marcelle, (60.000 dolars + 40,000 more for making new pieces). mircea won 20,000 which he’ll spend during an artistic residence next year.
the jury included daniel birnbaum (manager of the impressive moderna museet in stockholm and curator of the venice bienale in 2009), okwui enwezor (curator, art critic and professor), yuko hasegawa (curator), ivo mesquita (curator and art critic), eckhard schneider (the general manager of pinchuk art centre, robert storr (curator of the venice bienale in 2007, painter, critic and professor and the amazing Ai Weiwei (artist, curator, architectural designer – artistic consultant for the beijing national stadium, the man who replaced the copenhagen mermaid with a hologram and the guy with the porcelain sunflower seeds in tate modern).
Congratulations are in order for the artist!
credits: pinchuk art center, tataia.net