Pawel Althamer winner The Vincent Award 2004
The Vincent Award 2004 was presented to the Polish artist Pawel Althamer (b. Warsaw, 1967) in May 2004. In his work, Althamer combines traditional sculpture with radical performance, for which the jury rewarded him with the Vincent Award 2004. Kaspar König, the chair of the jury, expressed his admiration for Althamer’s ‘meticulous and economical way of making art’, his ‘unusual, almost 19th-century technique’ and ‘the psychological approach to consumer behaviour’. For these interventions in public spaces, Althamer sometimes hires actors, and at other times he looks for volunteers amongst the ‘outsiders’ of our society: tramps, alcoholics, children. This approach reveals Althamer’s sense of social engagement, which fortunately does not result in gloominess, but in works that are in fact light-hearted and humorous. In his sculptural work, Althamer uses the human figure, usually his own body, as an important source of inspiration.
Althamer’s work has recently been on display at the Biennials of Berlin (2006) and Istanbul (2005). The Centre Pompidou in Paris is showing the project ‘Pawel Althamer au Centre Pompidou’ from 13 September to 27 November 2006.
Exhibition
The third biennial Vincent Award was organised in the same way as the Vincent 2002. A new element was the Vincent Lecture, delivered by Jean-Claude Trichet, president of the European Central Bank, before the prize was awarded on 10 September. Mr. Trichet spoke about the possibilities of a European identity.
The core of the exhibition ‘Pawel Althamer The Vincent 2004’ was formed by sculpture, performance and video, the three most important artistic activities of Pawel Althamer. The galleries of the Bonnefantenmuseum were filled with Althamer’s recent sculptures and with a number of video installations. Althamer makes these documentary-like videos together with artist Artur Zmijewski. The most remarkable element of the exhibition, however, was the workshop organised by Althamer. He invited ten 14- and 15-year-old boys from the drab outskirts of Warsaw to come for a break in the ‘paradise’ of Maastricht. The boys covered the upper gallery of the Bonnefantenmuseum with graffiti in Polish and English, and Althamer recorded the workshop on video.
Jury
In 2004, the following professionals from the art world formed the jury of the Vincent:
Kasper König (chair) has been director of Museum Ludwig in Cologne since 2000. One of König’s roles before accepting this position was as chair of ‘Kunst und Öffentlichkeit’ (Art and the Public Sphere) at Düsseldorf’s art academy. Kasper König was involved in founding the Portikus exhibition space in Frankfurt, where he was director from 1988 to 2000. During this period he was also the director of the Städelschule in Frankfurt.
Iwona Blazwick is the director of the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London. Blazwick began her career as an independent exhibition curator in 1993. In the 1990s, her roles included working as a commissioning editor at Phaidon and as a tutor on a number of British art courses. As head of exhibitions and displays at Tate Modern, one of her responsibilities was, from 1997, the permanent collection of this new branch of the Tate Gallery. In 2001, Iwona Blazwick moved from Tate Modern to the Whitechapel Art Gallery.
Nuria Enguita Mayo (Fundació Antoni Tàpies) was a curator at the Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderna in Valencia from 1991 to 1998, and also participated in other artistic projects. From 1996, she worked with the Fundació Antoni Tàpies to create a number of exhibitions, including one about Lygia Clark. In 1998, Nuria Enguita Mayo made the definitive move to this foundation, where she now works as chief curator. Enguita Mayo also teaches on the ‘Art and Thinking’ programme at the University of Seville.
Neo Rauch is an artist and lives and works in Leipzig. He received the Vincent Award in 2002.
Alexander van Grevenstein is the director of the Bonnefantenmuseum in Maastricht, the host location of the Vincent from 2000 to 2004. He sat on the jury as a non-voting member.
The Dancers, 1997, dvd intallation for five monitors, 14,6 min, by Paul Althamer, winner of The Vincent Award 2004. Work of Althamer is acquired for The Monique Zajfen Collection