18th Baloise Art Prize awarded at Art Basel 2016

This year's jury includes: Marie-Noëlle Farcy, Curator/Head of Collection, MUDAM, Luxembourg; Sabine Schaschl, Director, Museum Haus Konstruktiv, Zurich; Peter Gorschlüter, Deputy Director MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt a.M.; Dr. Yilmaz Dziewior, Director Museum Ludwig, Cologne and Martin Schwander, Fine Art Advisor of Baloise, Chairman of the jury.

In Soft Film, Sara Cwynar has produced an entertaining and yet complex inquiry into fundamental aspects of photography, in particular its production and dissemination in digital and analogue systems. Her video essay, largely filmed in 16mm format, links performative elements with reflections on the construction of the photographic image. Cwynar buys cast-off objects on eBay and purchases photographs in a second-hand store. These she organizes and archives by colour, material and subject matter. Social concerns, such as the circulation and value of objects, as well as feminist issues and the significance of personal incidents and historical events all come into play. The artist poses crucial questions about what photographed imagery means to us today both individually and socially. In so doing, she deploys an aesthetics that varies from the deliberate parading of a do-it-yourself character to the seductive power of professional advertising.

Sara Cwynar, *1985 in Vancouver, lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Statements booth N16, Foxy Production Inc. Gallery, New York.

Mary Reid Kelley has been awarded the Baloise Prize for her film This Is Offal, which takes a unique and intense approach to the sensitive topic of female suicide. Echoing the tradition of the theater of the absurd, the film takes place in a morgue and staging a dead woman corpse and her ghost apparition. Crucial to the drama, staged in the film, is the dialogue in which the woman engages with her own organs and body parts: liver, heart and brain as well as her foot and hand. It is a dialogue rich in wordplay that explores the fact of death and the value of the life the woman has lived. The decision of the jury was motivated not only by the technical originality of the piece but also by the both profound and entertaining way in which the artist addressed a sociologically loaded issue.

Mary Reid Kelley, *1979 in Greenville, South Carolina, lives in Saratoga Springs, New York.

Statements booth N8, Arratia Beer Gallery, Berlin.

For additional information on the Baloise commitment to art and on previous award-winning artists, see www.baloiseartprize.com and www.baloise.com/art.

Contact

Baloise Group External Communications, phone +41 58 285 74 71, isabelle.guggenheim@baloise.com.