Nam June Paik Award 2018 – International Media Art Award of the Arts Foundation North Rhine-Westphalia

 

Andreas Angelidakis, Melanie Bonajo, Antoine Catala, Hanne Lippard, Sondra Perry

10 November 2018–3 February 2019

Opening

Friday, 9 November 2018
(admission free)

VenueWestfälischer Kunstverein, Rothenburg 30, 48143 Münster
Opening Hours Tuesday - Sunday, 11am - 7pm
Admission4 € / 2 € concessions / members free

This year, the Kunststiftung NRW is presenting its international media art prize – the Nam June Paik Award – for the ninth time. The Nam June Paik Award specifically honours artists that push boundaries, bridge cultural divides and are transdisciplinary in approach, very much in the spirit of Nam June Paik's pioneering practice. Staged every two years, the competition takes place in conjunction with a designated art institution in North Rhine-Westphalia. As the first Kunstverein in the award’s history, the Westfälischer Kunstverein has been selected as project partner and will host the exhibition featuring the five nominated artists. 

The nominees have been selected by a panel of experts comprising Kristina Scepanski, Director of the Westfälischer Kunstverein, Hanne Mugaas, Director of the Kunsthall Stavanger in Norway and Anne-Claire Schmitz, founding director of La Loge in Brussels. 

The nominees are
Andreas Angelidakis (b. 1968, GR, lives in Athens)
Melanie Bonajo (b. 1978, NL, lives in Amsterdam)
Antoine Catala (b. 1975, F, lives in New York)
Hanne Lippard (b. 1984, GB, lives in Berlin)
Sondra Perry (b. 1986, US, lives in New York)

 

Andreas Angelidakis undertakes a kind of media archaeology in his works when he posits an analogy between the classical philosopher Diogenes and ancient vessels emblazoned with drawings and stories on the one hand, and our use of media today on the other. In her video installations, Melanie Bonajo counters our high-tech world with nature and its potential – at times it concerns existential experience, at others the man/machine interface. Antoine Catala's kinetic and pneumatic objects utilise precisely this innovative technology in order to focus thematically upon fundamental human feelings. Hanne Lippard stages highly nuanced and precise voice-based performances and installations that communicate through sound and the spoken word taken from her elegant, poetic texts. Sondra Perry produces videos and video sculptures that frequently demand physical activity on the part of the viewer and thus channel the focus upon the body once more, its potential and its shortcomings, whereby paradoxically this very body would seem to have become almost superfluous in our increasingly digital world.

 

Sondra Perry was awarded winner of the Nam June Paik Award 2018.

 

The award includes prize money of 25,000 Euro and was awarded on 9 November 2018 on site in Münster by an international panel of judges comprising
Karen Archey, Curator of Contemporary Art and Time-based media, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam
Mark Beasley, Curator of Media and Performance, Hirshhorn Museum, Washington
Mélanie Bouteloup, Director Bétonsalon – Center for Art and Research, Paris
Katerina Gregos, Curator and writer, Brussels
and Krist Gruijthuijsen, Director, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin. 


Andreas Angelidakis

Melanie Bonajo

Antoine Catala

Hanne Lippard

Sondra Perry


Winner Nam June Paik Award National 2016

Tamaki Watanabe und Walter Zurborg
"idle_listening"

 

 

OpeningFriday, 9 November 2018 
(Admission free)
VenueGalerie der Gegenwart (Access via Westfälischer Kunstverein)
Opening HoursTuesday-Sunday 11 am-7 pm
Admission4 € / 2 € concessions / members free

At the adjacent Galerie der Gegenwart, Westfälischer Kunstverein presents a site-specific installation by artist duo Tamaki Watanabe and Walter Zurborg, the winners of the Nam June Paik Award National 2016. The Kunststiftung NRW donates this prize traditionally with an opportunity to show new work two years after the actual competition.

 

With playful delight in transforming objects in surprising ways, with absurd combinations of materials and motifs, but also with a fine feel for their specific exhibition sites, Tamaki Watanabe and Walter Zurborg develop complex installations in their joint artistic projects. Their working process usually begins with found objects and materials that others have either overlooked as ordinary items or long since written off as unserviceable. Both artists are finders as well as inventors in the best sense of the word. And like all good inventors who create something new, they build on a wealth of prior knowledge, including the Dadaist assemblage of seemingly worthless everyday items to form new pictorial worlds and the kinetics and sound art of the 1960s, back when conventional notions of what constitutes a work of art were loosening up and expanding. Above all, the wonderful humor of Fluxus lives on in their installations. 

Text from catalogue of 2016 by Thomas Niemeyer

 

 


Public Programme

 Münster Lecture with Cory Arcangel
(nominated for Nam June Paik Award 2014)
at University of Fine Arts, Leonardo-Campus 2, 48149 Münster

Tuesday, 6 November at 6 pm

 

Exhibition walkthrough with the artists
Saturday, 10 November at 11 am
At Westfälischer Kunstverein

 

Nam June Paik video screening
In co-operation with filmclub Münster
At Schloßtheater, Melchersstraße 81, 48149 Münster
Sunday, 2 December at 11 am

 

Guided tours with curator Kristina Scepanski
Sunday, 9 December at noon

Friday, 11 January at 6 pm

Thursday, 31 January at 6 pm

 

 

A cooperation between Kunststiftung NRW and Westfälischer Kunstverein.