ART CITIES:Berlin-Nationalgalerie Prize 2019
Pauline Curnier Jardin, Simon Fujiwara, Flaka Haliti and Katja Novitskova have been nominated for the Preis der Nationalgalerie. The Museum prize is awarded every two years and pays tribute to artists under 40 who live and work in Germany. All four artists show spatial ensembles in which they combine existing and new works. The tonality and handwriting of the four spatial work presentations is very different; what they have in common is an explicit reference to aspects of our contemporary European society.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Hamburger Bahnhof-Museum für Gegenwart Archive
With her transgressive artistic approach, which combines visual and narrative elements of theatre and cinema, Pauline Curnier Jardin creates a stage space for the shortlist exhibition; a walk-in installation in which cinematic and sculptural work intermesh in Curnier Jardin’s characteristic manner. Her often humorous works are the result of a very personal examination of historical circumstances, our historical background, our religious and cultural traditions as well as common gender roles and connotations. With his works, which include painting, video, sculpture, installations and performances, Simon Fujiwara comments on very different levels on the situation of the human being in the medialized 21st century, starting from his own person and generation. His works, which have been selected for the exhibition and in part newly created, are the result of Fujiwara’s in-terest in contemporary mass phenomena and their economic and socio-political aspects. The very different works illustrate the extent to which these phenomena have an emotional component of their own. Flaka Haliti’s sculpture and installation work refers to themes of current political importance; she addresses war and peace, migration, borders and their permeability. Often and explicitly, the artist focuses on Europe. Her works have a clear statement and at the same time a strong meta-phorical and poetic quality. With two sculptural installations, she refers to the recent past of her country of origin. She continues her series of works “Is it you, Joe?” with large wall works, playing with identity and schematization. As one of the pioneers of an artistic language known as “Post-Internet Art”, Katja Novitskova create a virtuoso, multi-part and multi-layered “environment” for the exhibition, that encompasses and captures the vis-itors and blurs the boundaries between the individual works. The works are the result of Novitskova’s ongoing interest in current biotechnological research and revolve around the question of the future existence of the organic as a component of technological processes.
Info: Hamburger Bahnhof-Museum für Gegenwart Berlin, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Invalidenstrasse 50-51, Berlin, Duration 16/8/19-16/2/20, Days & Hours: Tue-Wed & Fri-Sat 10:00-18:00, Thu 10:00-20:00, sun 11:00-18:00, www.freunde-der-nationalgalerie.de
