Bik Van der Pol winners international prize

15/03/2010

The winner is chosen from seven artists from all around the world - Loris Gréaud (France), Jonathan Horowitz (USA), Anya Gallaccio (Great Britain), Meg Cranston (USA), Daniel Canogar (Spain), Allora & Calzadilla (Puerto Rico) and Bik van der Pol (Holland), each one having been selected by a representative from the Scientific Committee made up of international experts from the world of contemporary art.

The Scientific Committee’s members are: Marc-Oliver Wahler (director of the Palais de Tokyo, Paris), Beatrix Ruf (Curator of the Kunsthalle, Zurich), Mami Kataoka (chief curator of the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo), Tirdad Zolghadr (independent curator and critic, Berlin), Lourdes Fernandez (director of the ARCO fair in Madrid), Jessica Morgan (curator at the Tate Modern, London) and Hou Hanru (director of Exhibitions and Public Programs at the San Francisco Art Institute).

Selected by Hou Hanru (Director of Temporary Exhibitions at the San Francisco Art Institute), on March 9th Bik van der Pol was announced the winner by the Honours Committee, made up of eminent figures from the world of culture who have contributed to our country’s cultural and artistic heritage in an innovative and international way, and also by a Presidential Committee.

The Honours Committee for the Enel Contemporanea Award 2010 included: Beatrice Trussardi (President of the Trussardi Foundation), Franca Sozzani (Editor-in-Chief of Vogue Italia) and architect Michele De Lucchi, Francesco Micheli (President of MiTo Settembre Musica), who were joined by members of the Presidential Committee, Piero Gnudi (Chairman of Enel), Luca Massimo Barbero (Director of the MACRO) and Francesco Bonami (Artistic Director of Enel Contemporanea).

The project sponsored by Enel is to create new works of art every year, with an energy theme, with commissions by artists from around the world (www.enelcontemporanea.it). The work of art will be created with the help of Enel and donated to the MACRO – the Museum of Contemporary Art in Rome – where it will be inaugurated next autumn.

In Are you really sure that a floor can't also be a ceiling, artists reflect on the relationship between man and nature, highlighting the need to behave in an environmentally-sustainable way. Thus, the celebrated Farnsworth House, designed by Mies van der Rohe, which has been recreated as a one-off within the museum, will become a unique home for butterflies, which are now one of the most sensitive species to climate change and have even become an indicator of environmental changes.

Liesbeth Bik and Jos van der Pol have been working together as Bik van der Pol since 1995. Their pieces invite audiences to rethink spaces, their architecture, their function and history. They explore art’s potential to produce and convey consciousness as though creating opportunities for communication. Recent projects and exhibitions include: the Istanbul Biennial; the Volksgarten exhibition at the Kunsthaus in Graz; Plug In at the Van AbbeMuseum in Eindhoven; Models For Tomorrow at the European Kunsthalle in Cologne; the Moscow Biennale (2007); Fly Me To The Moon, at Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum; Naked Life, MOCA, Taipei (2006); Secession, Vienna; Cork Caucus Cork (2005); and Nomads in Residence, a workspace for artists, Utrecht (2003, with architects Korteknie/Stuhlmacher).
They have also produced a number of publications including: Catching Some Air (2002), With Love From The Kitchen (2005), the current series Past Imperfect (2005, 2007), Fly Me To The Moon (2006) and The Lost Moment (2007).

The partnership between Enel and MACRO was launched last year, with the aim of creating enlightening synergies between the public and private sectors to promote contemporary art. To coincide with the preview for the New MACRO which will take place in Rome from May 26th to the 30th 2010, the new museum space will officially welcome the work of art Frontier, created by American artist Doug Aitken for Enel Contemporanea 2009 and donated by Enel to the MACRO after its autumn residency on the Tiber Island.

Previous editions of Enel Contemporanea have seen work by seven international artists:
• in 2009, the open-air installation by American Doug Aitken on the tip of the Tiber
Island in Rome;
• in 2008, an environmentally-sustainable waiting room, equipped with solar panels,
created by Jeffrey Inaba from the United States at the Policlinico Umberto I Hospital in Rome (permanent exhibit), a fun display of images, neon and video projections by assume vivid astro focus amidst the ancient ruins of the Largo Argentina in Rome and a secret garden created by the A12 group on the Venetian Lagoon for the 11th Venice Biennale International Architecture Exhibition;
• in 2007, in Rome, a major installation by the Italian Patrick Tuttofuoco in Piazza del Popolo, an interactive fountain by Jeppe Hein from Denmark in the Garbatella district, and a striking lunar eclipse by English artist Angela Bulloch over Rome’s Ara Pacis.

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