Earlier this month the Museo Internazionale delle Ceramiche in Faenza announced the winners of the 59th Faenza prize. The prize is an international competition for contemporary ceramic art, split into categories of artists who are either above or below the age of 40. They also awarded the Cersaie Prize and a Prize of Honor from the Presidency of the Senate of the Italian Republic, among others.
Above image: Nicholas Lees, Four Leaning Vessels. Photo credit Sylvain Deleu.
According to a museum statement, the call for submissions drew more than 1,300 works from 618 artists from 57 countries. Jurors were Claudia Casali, Director of MIC Faenza, Monika Gass, Director of Keramikmuseum, Westerwald, Höhr-Grenzhausen, Germany; Grant Gibson, Director of the Crafts Council Magazine, Great Britain and Daniela Lotta, Art and Design historian, teacher ISIA in Faenza.
Silvia Celeste Calcagno, Interno 8 – La fleur coupée
The jury awarded the over 40 Faenza Prize to Italian artist Silvia Celeste Calcagno for the work Interno 8 – La fleur coupée. The jury stated that the work built upon a narrative linked to women’s political and social issues.
“The female figure has been portrayed through her fragilities and intimacy, she has been shown in counterposed situations which join images with a marked emotional perspective. The work manages very well the different contemporary languages as a performance, photography, sound and environmental installation. It gives a structure to a complex stratified narration, which becomes concrete through a experimental research on ceramics, where a whole composition made up of 2000 little plaques exalts the single detail, in a wide ranging abstraction.”
Helene Kirchmair, Bobbles
Thomas Stollar, 1900 steps #2
The under 40 prize went to Austrian artist Helene Kirchmair for the work Bobbles and to United States artist Thomas Stollar for his work 1900 steps #2. The jury states:
“Helene Kirchmair analyzes the micro and macrocosm through a different way of working on the surfaces. It offers visual and tactile sensations really original that call to mind the organic and vegetal dimension, the invisible but real essence.
Thomas Stollar starts a process of relation with the places of his daily routine reaching the formalization, through a modeled-visual resolution, his life experience.”
Nicholas Lees, Four Leaning Vessels. Photo credit Sylvain Deleu.
The Cersaie Prize went to British artist Nicholas Lees for his work Four Leaning Vessels. The jury states:
“(T)hrough his flawless technical perfection, the artist communicates a sensation of dematerialized lightness which call to mind “trompe-l-oeil” effects, which are dynamic and bright. The shape overcomes the archetypal of the vase and becomes motion, perception and intangible uncertainty.”
Please visit the museum’s page for other prize winners.
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