ARKEN ART PRIZE GOES TO CYPRIEN GAILLARD

Read more about this year's winner and see who were awarded with the ARKEN TRAVEL GRANTS.

Seductive decay, magical laboratories and strange paper cut-outs. On Thursday 17 March the ARKEN ART PRIZE was presented for the eleventh time and this year’s recipient of the prize of DKK 100,000 is French artist Cyprien Gaillard.

Cyprien Gaillard (b. 1980) is one of the truly major names on the international contemporary art scene and has exhibited all over the world. In his thought-provoking, poetic video works and installations Cyprien Gaillard explores human traces in nature. He often takes his starting point in destruction, as both a destructive and creative force, and with his decaying modern buildings and disappearing landscape thematizes humanity’s inevitable fate and the transitoriness of life.

Of the choice of this year’s prizewinner ARKEN’s Director Christian Gether says: “Cyprien Gaillard is awarded the ARKEN Prize 2016 because in challenging and intelligent ways he creates seductive, critical and thoughtprovoking experiences of art that make us think about the human imprint on the world.”

ARKEN TRAVEL GRANT 2016

This year’s travel grants of DKK 50.000 were awarded to Astrid Myntekær and Peter Callesen.

Magical laboratories

Astrid Myntekær (b. 1985) works in a thematic borderland between science and mysticism. Combining high technology with simple, easily accessible materials, she explores the invisible forces and energies that perhaps exert an influence on the surrounding world. Her works balance elegantly between the
delicate and the spectacular. The use of light as an essential artistic material is particularly characteristic of Astrid Myntekær’s practice, often evoking associations with science fiction, magic and mysticism in her sensory installations.

Astrid Myntekær receives the ARKEN TRAVEL GRANT 2016 because with her seductive works she invites the viewer to a bodily reflection over the spatial and sensory situation.

Strange paper cut-outs

Peter Callesen (b. 1967) has made paper and scissors his trademark. His production ranges from ingenious, detailed small cut-outs to grand-scale paper installations and performances. Peter Callesen often takes his starting point in
the quite ordinary and familiar A4 paper format, which in his hands is changed and transformed in strange ways into something spatial and figurative. Narrative and tale are recurrent themes in Callesen’s production. He opens up playful,
magical worlds that exist between dream and reality, and it is in this encounter that the works come alive – often in tragicomic ways.

Peter Callesen receives the ARKEN TRAVEL GRANT 2016 because he is able with simple materials to create surprising visual narratives that touch on the great existential issues, but does so in a playful, humorous way that resonates with all of us.