2024/02/22: Finkenwerder Art Prize 2024

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Julia Scher Wins the 2024 Finkenwerder Art Prize

Finkenwerder Grant from HFBK Hamburg Goes to Anna Stüdeli

Exhibition opening and award ceremony: Thursday, 30 May 2024, 6 p.m.
Exhibition dates: 31 May –30 June 2024, 2–6 p.m., every day except Mondays
ICAT, Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg, Lerchenfeld 2a, 22081 Hamburg

This year’s winner of the prestigious Finkenwerder Art Prize has been selected: the American artist Julia Scher will receive the prize, which includes an award of 20,000 euros, on 30 May, joining the ranks of such distinguished figures as Georges Adéagbo, Renée Green, Candida Höfer, and Daniel Richter. In addition, Anna Stüdeli, who studied sculpture at the Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg, will receive the Finkenwerder Grant from the HFBK Hamburg, which includes an award of 10,000 euros. To mark the occasion, both artists will present solo exhibitions at ICAT.

Main Prize Goes to Julia Scher

In her first solo exhibition in Hamburg, the Cologne-based artist Julia Scher (*1954) will make the core of her decades-long work tangible while simultaneously updating it: As a pioneer, she has dealt almost prophetically with surveillance and security technology in public spaces, computer-generated text and imagery, as well as the control of data and the associated questions through sculptures, (video) installations, internet art, and performances since the 1980s. The aesthetics of this now outdated technology, which includes bulky monitors and cameras, pixelated images, and wiring, reminds us of how much we have become accustomed to the now-invisible transmission of data.

Inspired by Donna Haraway’s groundbreaking collection of essays Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, Julia Scher explores contemporary surveillance technology in this exhibition through existing and new series of works in an almost poetic manner. A closed-circuit television system and oversized marble owls hold up a mirror to viewers. How do we want to act in a future, digitalized world looking back on outdated technology? Can new technology be beneficial? These are questions that have once again become relevant in light of cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence. In her new animated video, Scher also employs an owl-like creature that stands paradigmatically for purpose-bound observation—that of the wise and vigilant bird of prey.

Anna Stüdeli Receives Finkenwerder Grant

Swiss artist Anna Stüdeli (*1990), who lives in Hamburg, will present a series of new wall-based works and sculptures in her first institutional solo show in Germany. After starting her career in photography, Stüdeli explored sculpture while pursuing her master’s degree at the HFBK, with a particular focus on the surface behavior of soft materials such as latex, hair, animal skin, modeling clay, and foam. Skin-like surfaces, membranes separating an inside from an outside, and their vulnerability are also at the forefront of her current works, in which photography extends sculpturally across multiple layers.

For her collages, she processes ultra-close-up shots of advertising posters in urban spaces using analog techniques to form new statements. The search for reality behind the advertising messages reveals a pixelated image on poster paper glued to billboards and building facades covered in graffiti, stickers, and scribbles. Stüdeli reduces eye-catching advertising aesthetics to the vulnerability of the surface, blurring the boundary between illusion and reality.

Finkenwerder Art Prize

Initiated in 1999 by the Kulturkreis Finkenwerder e.V., the Finkenwerder Art Prize underwent a reorientation in 2022 in cooperation with the Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg: As a new partner, the HFBK has expanded the prize to also promote young artists, and hosts the exhibition of the winners at ICAT on Lerchenfeld. In addition to the main prize of 20,000 euros, the Finkenwerder Grant from the HFBK Hamburg is now also awarded, with a grant of 10,000 euros for a graduate of the art school. Airbus Operations GmbH funds the prizes, including the exhibition and publication, with a total of 50,000 euros.

A changing panel of experts, appointed by a board of trustees, selects the most remarkable proposals from their own submissions. This time, the jury consisted of Angela Bulloch, Astrid Mania, and Pia Stadtbäumer (professors at the HFBK) as well as Jessica McClam (artist) and Tobias Peper (director of the Harburger Kunstverein). They unanimously chose Julia Scher as the main prize winner and Anna Stüdeli as the recipient of the grant.

Programme

Friday, 31 May 2024, 6 p.m. Artist Talk with Julia Scher and HFBK Professor Simon Denny
Tuesday, 4 June 2024, at 6 pm, Artist Talk with Anna Stüdeli and Anne Meerpohl

Both events will take place at the ICAT of the HFBK, Lerchenfeld 2a, 22081 Hamburg.

Pressekontakt

Sabine Boshamer
Room:145a Le
Phone: +49 40 42 89 89-205
Mail:presse@hfbk.hamburg.de

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Finkenwerder Kunstpreis 2024 Raumplan

The cinema in the new film house, Finkenau 42; photo: Tim Albrecht

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"The New Woman - How Female Artists and Designers shaped the Image of Modernism", graphic by Liudmila Savelyeva, Karla Krey, Amira Mostafa (Klasse Digitale Grafik)

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Detail: Installation by Mark Morris; photo: Tim Albrecht

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Julia Scher, Territorium, 2024, installationview at ICAT of HFBK Hamburg; photo: Tim Albrecht

Finkenwerder Art Prize 2024

The US artist Julia Scher will receive the Finkenwerder Art Prize 2024, while Anna Stüdeli, who studied sculpture at the HFBK Hamburg, will be honoured with the Finkenwerder Grant from the HFBK.

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Sharon Poliakine, Untitled, 2023, oil on canvas, detail

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photo: Ronja Lotz

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Visitors of the annual exhibition 2024; photo: Lukes Engelhardt

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Examination of the submitted portfolios

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photo: Tim Albrecht

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photo: Miriam Schmidt / HFBK

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ASA Open Studios winter semester 2021/22; photo: Marie-Theres Böhmker

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Amna Elhassan, Tea Lady, oil on canvas, 100 x 100 cm

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Renée Green. ED/HF, 2017. Film still. Courtesy of the artist, Free Agent Media, Bortolami Gallery, New York, and Galerie Nagel Draxler, Berlin/Cologne/Munich.

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New studio in the row of houses at Lerchenfeld, in the background the building of Fritz Schumacher; photo: Tim Albrecht

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photo: Klaus Frahm

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ASA Open Studio 2019, Karolinenstraße 2a, Haus 5; photo: Matthew Muir

Live und in Farbe: die ASA Open Studios im Juni 2021

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Studiengruppe Prof. Dr. Anja Steidinger, Was animiert uns?, 2021, Mediathek der HFBK Hamburg, Filmstill

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Ausstellungsansicht "Schule der Folgenlosigkeit. Übungen für ein anderes Leben" im Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg; photo: Maximilian Schwarzmann

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Annual Exhibition 2021 at the HFBK

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Katja Pilipenko

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Alltagsrealität oder Klischee?; photo: Tim Albrecht

HFBK Graduate Survey

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Ausstellung Social Design, Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg, Teilansicht; photo: MKG Hamburg

How political is Social Design?

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