North Rhine-Westphalia Art Prize 2021

Image: Mary Bauermeister, Brian O'Doherty Commentary Box, 2017, 17" x 24 3/4" x 4 1/8".
Ink, stone, offset print, glass, glass lens, paint brush, metal and wood tools, painted wood construction.

ART

Mary Bauermeister

Art Prize

Mary Bauermeister, whose expansive, multidisciplinary practice helped shape the Fluxus movement, is the first winner of a new art prize given by the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, where the artist lives. Bauermeister’s art is wide-ranging in both its media and its conceptual concerns. She produces drawings, paintings, installations, mixed-media constructions that deal with science, poetry, nature, mathematics, music, and current social and political issues. Her studio is currently at work on producing a catalogue raisonné with the support of her New York gallery, Michael Rosenfeld, which has represented the artist since 2018.

About the North Rhine-Westphalia Art Prize



Grand Prix d’Architecture 2021
Académie des beaux-arts

Image: Henri Ciriani, Maison de l’Enfance, Torcy, Marne-la-Vallée, 1986-1989. © Jean-Marie Monthiers

ARCHITECTURE

Henri Ciriani

Grand Prix d’Architecture

Henri Ciriani was born in Lima in 1936 and came to France at the age of 27. He made his debut in various agencies before joining the AUA, the Atelier d’urbanisme et d’architecture which, along with other great names like Paul Chemetov or Borja Huidobro, Fabre and Perrottet… would make social housing a discipline in its own right. Active in the innovative urban project of Grenoble at the end of the 1960s, he stood out ten years later with La Noiseraie, in Marne-la-Vallée, a housing complex hailed by critics. Active in France, Italy, the Netherlands and Peru, he still signs high-quality public buildings such as the Historial de la Grande Guerre in Péronne or the Musée départemental Arles Antique.

About the Grand Prix d’Architecture Académie des beaux-arts




Prix Carré sur Seine 2021

Image: Rayan Yasmineh, Cyrus et l'odeur du lys.

ART

Clédia Fourniau

Camila Rodriguez Triana

Rayan Yasmineh

Prix Carré sur Seine

Clédia Fourniau sees her work "as an archeology of the colored layer, transparency and light, where painting questions the relationship between body and space".
Camila Rodriguez Triana produces visual and sound installations and documentary and experimental films. Her artistic approach brings to light man's loneliness and fragility in the face of hardship, his quest for identity and his work of memory within society.
In his portraits, Rayan Yasmineh's work blends Persian history and iconography with contemporary Western identity. His paintings bring together a profusion of ornamental details and shimmering colors with a controlled construction of lines and planes.

About the Prix Carré sur Seine




Programme Immersion
Fondation d’entreprise Hermès

Image: Raymond Meeks, Somersault, 2021, Mack edition.

PHOTOGRAPHY

Raymond Meeks

Programme Immersion

Immersion, a Franco-American photographic commission, is an annual program of cross residencies, exhibitions and publications, alternatively open to a photographer based in the United States, wishing to create a work in France, then, the following year, to a photographer based in France, wishing to create a work in the United States.
Born in 1963 in Columbus (Ohio), Raymond Meeks lives and works in the Hudson Valley (New York). Known for his books and his images which deal with questions of memory and place, he explores how the landscape can shape the individual and, in a more abstract way, how a place, even absent, can continue to exercise a power of fascination over human beings.

About the Programme Immersion Fondation d’entreprise Hermès



Résidence Ruralité(s)

Image: Jérôme Blin, L’entretemps, 2020, Sur La Crête (SLC) edition.

PHOTOGRAPHY

Jérôme Blin

Résidence Ruralité(s)

In collaboration with the Champs Libres in Rennes, the association of the Festival Photo La Gacilly has developed a residency program on the theme of Ruralité(s) to allow a photographer to work on the writing and production of a creation over a long period of time.
Jérôme Blin's work is based on a documentary approach while leaving a large place for sensitivity. His photography navigates between reality and fiction where the spirit of the place becomes the subject. His project for the residency is part of the continuation of his work on the rural world and the outskirts. Jérôme Blin wishes to take an interest in rural youth at a time of their choice and no choice, to stay or to leave.

About the Résidence Ruralité(s)



Prix Balzac 2021

Image: Aglaé Bory, La plage, Calais, 2016, 80x64 cm.

PHOTOGRAPHY

Aglaé Bory

Prix Balzac

Aglaé Bory won the Prix Balzac for her photography: La plage, Calais, 2016, which echoes Honoré de Balzac's work, highlighting the contemporary Comédie humaine. This year, the prize rewards a photographer, in tribute to Robert Doisneau, who received the prize in 1986. "Photography has a duty to restore our sight when we are blind," explains Aglaé Bory. "We need shared horizons more than ever. We make images to create meaning, to reinvent the bonds that form a society, to give us back common horizons, a moving identity and thus to make history." On the photo, Magdi Elzein, sudanese exile, obtained his papers and continues his studies at Sciences Po.

About the Prix Balzac



VH Award 2021

Image: Lawrence Lek, still from Black Cloud, 2021, provided by Hyundai Motor Group VH Award.

NEW MEDIA ART

Lawrence Lek

Grand Prix

Lawrence Lek won the Grand Prix of the 4th VH Award, a biannual event organised by Hyundai Motor Group to discover and support emerging artists from Asian backgrounds.
Lawrence Lek’s Grand Prix-winning work, Black Cloud, is the culmination of an ongoing body of virtual reality artworks. The multimedia artist, who is London-based and of Malaysian-Chinese descent, explores the geopolitical implications of artificial intelligence and illuminates links between art and AI. Through virtual-space creations, he explores different societal attitudes toward AI and how it can control values, lifestyles and modes of operation around the world.

About the VH Award




Paris Photo – Aperture Foundation
PhotoBook Awards 2021

Image: Muhammad Faldi and Fatris MF, The Banda Journal, 2021,
Jordan, jordan Édition, Jakarta Indonesia.

PHOTOGRAPHY

Muhammad Faldi and Fatris MF

PhotoBook of the Year

The winner of the PhotoBook of the Year Award, The Banda Journal, by photographer Muhammad Fadli and writer and folklore enthusiast Fatris MF, presents the little-known story of the Indonesian Banda Islands, a tiny archipelago that has served an outsize role in global trade and the modern economy. Through incisive and engaging storytelling, the book connects a seemingly distant and brutal past with its contemporary consequences on the islands today. Final juror Daniel Blaufuks noted that, "The Banda Journal is very well-designed; very engaging—a book in which text and image are expertly intertwined, inviting return viewing and reading—and that offers us new perspectives from a region we don’t often have the opportunity to hear from artistically."

About the Paris Photo – Aperture Foundation PhotoBook Awards