Prix Meret Oppenheim 2024
Image: burkhalter sumi architekten, Forsanose, Volketswil, Switzerland, 2013.
ARCHITECTURE
Marianne Burkhalter and Christian Sumi
Prix Meret Oppenheim
Architectural duo Marianne Burkhalter and Christian Sumi have been awarded the Prix Meret Oppenheim 2024 in architecture for their pioneering work in modern timber construction. They founded their company in 1984, collaborated with environmentalists and carried out their own research into energy saving. They began to build wooden structures, as light as possible and with a minimum of materials. In the 1990s, they were able to take advantage of the opportunities offered by the development of new technologies in timber construction. Influenced by Hans Fischli, Emil Roth and the American industrial construction pioneer Konrad Wachsmann, as well as Le Corbusier, Frank Lloyd Wright and many others, Marianne Burkhalter and Christian Sumi were part of a rapidly changing architectural scene.
Image: Valérie Favre, Bateau des Poètes (Robert Walser, Marina Iwanowa Zwetajewa, Georges Bernanos, Walter Benjamin), 2020, 170x130 cm.
ART
Valérie Favre
Prix Meret Oppenheim
Painter Valérie Favre has been awarded the Prix Meret Oppenheim 2024 in art. From the French part of Switzerland, Valérie Favre is internationally known for the mythical creatures and figures that populate her series of oil paintings. Her compositions are characterized by a fictional world full of unrest, contradiction and contrast. Her expressive, dynamic paintings critically examine motifs and images from art history and literature. Favre "builds" structures by working in parallel on different groups of works that overlap over several years. For her, painting is a radical way of "thinking the world". After starting out in theatre and film, in the late 1980s she began to concentrate on the medium of painting in an artistic discourse dominated by conceptualism and minimalism.
About the Prix Meret Oppenheim
Ralph Saltzman Prize 2024
Image: Attua Aparicio, Digit Texture. Photo by Jixiao Tong
DESIGN
Attua Aparicio
Ralph Saltzman Prize
Designer Attua Aparicio is the winner of The Ralph Saltzman Prize 2024. She will be exhibiting her work at the Design Museum from 1 February to 15 April. Aparicio is a London-based multidisciplinary artist working in the intersection of design, craft and art. Her practice is driven by material research and experimentation seeking to find new combinations and ways of making. She is interested in sustainability, material hybridization and tactility. She often collaborates with her sister, artist Saelia Aparicio, and has worked with glass artist Jochen Holz. Aparicio also co-founded Silo Studio with Oscar Lessing.
About the Ralph Saltzman Prize
ceramic brussels 2024
Image: Damien Fragnon, Interconnexion aquatique # naturer de dune, 2022.
Photo © Elise Ortiou Campion
CRAFT
Damien Fragnon
Prix du jury
At ceramic brussels 2024, the art fair dedicated to contemporary ceramics, Damien Fragnon was named winner of the Prix du jury. He will be presenting his work in a solo exhibition at ceramic brussels 2025. Damien Fragnon is a French artist born in Clermont-Ferrand in 1987. After obtaining a Higher National Diploma in Plastic Expression from the ESAAA, he took up several residencies in Picardy and Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, among others. At the heart of his art is eco-repair and environmental simulation, which he creates using various media such as metal, light and natural elements.
Ruth Awards
Image: Rose B. Simpson, Cairn, 2023. Patinated and painted bronze,
84x17x15 3/4 in. / 213.4x43.2x40 cm.
ART
Kite
Candice Lin
Joe Minter
Rose B. Simpson
Ruth Awards
The inaugural winners of the new Ruth Awards, launched by the Milwaukee-based Ruth Foundation for the Arts, are: Kite, Candice Lin, Joe Minter and Rose B. Simpson. Kite is an Oglála Lakȟóta artist, academic and composer who is best-known for works that use machine learning and AI to engage Lakȟóta mythologies and knowledge. Lin is a multidisciplinary artist known for creating large-scale installations that look at the histories of colonization. Minter is an artist and cultural historian who is best-known for his sprawling didactic artwork African Village in America, which he created on the land adjacent to his home in Birmingham. Simpson is a mixed-media artist based in Santa Clara Pueblo, New Mexico, she is known for sculptures that filter Indigenous and matrilinear themes into organic forms.
2023 Architecture Drawing Prize
Image: Eldry John Infante, ‘(Re)membering the See Monster’, detail of the drawing.
Image Courtesy of WAF
ARCHITECTURE
Eldry John Infante
Overall Winner
The World Architecture Festival and Prize, together with co-curators Make Architects and Sir John Soane’s Museum, have announced Filipino architect and illustrator Eldry John Infante as the Overall Winner of the 2023 Architecture Drawing Prize. The awarded drawing, titled ‘(Re)membering the See Monster’ is a mixed-media representation of a defunct oil platform. The image aims to invite conversations on the topic of reuse, going beyond the structure’s physicality. Eldry John Infante’s drawing was praised for is cinematic narrative, featuring a collage-like composition of panels, all contributing to its storytelling. The hybrid drawing experiments with different representational conventions, utilizing both digital and hand-drawn techniques to create an engaging image, one which can serve as a starting point for conversations on the future of these impressive "sea monsters".
