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Open Group wins the Main Award of the PinchukArtCentre Prize 2015

Anna Zvyagintseva and Alina Kleitman have been awarded Special Prizes. Anna Zvyagintseva also received Public Choice Prize.

The Open Group is the Main Prize Winner of the fourth edition of the PinchukArtCentre Prize. The artists have been awarded UAH 250,000 (USD 10,000) and one-month residency at a studio of an internationally renowned artist. Additionally, the Main Prize Winner is automatically included in the short list of the Future Generation Art Prize 2016, a worldwide contemporary art prize.

The Winners of the Main Prize and the two Special Prizes have been selected and announced at the award ceremony in Kyiv by the members of the distinguished international jury that in 2015 includes:Bart De Baere, Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Antwerp (M HKA), Belgium; Bjorn Geldhof, Artistic and strategic director of Yarat, Azerbaijan; Martin Kiefer, Curator, contemporary art section, Louvre, France; Yuri Leiderman, artist and writer, Ukraine / Germany, and Anna Smolak, Chief curator, BWA SOKÓŁ Gallery in Nowy Sącz.

For the exhibition of the 16 shortlisted artists for the PinchukArtCentre Prize 2015 the Open Group came up with the Exclusively for Internal Use project. Within its framework, the artists travelled from their homes in Lviv to PinchukArtCentre in Kyiv. On the trip they were researching the co-existence of people who did not know each other but had to interact in public space. Every stage of their journey – in a tram, in an economy class of a train and in the underground – was documented using video, photo and books.

Awarding the Open Group (Yuriy Biley (27, Lviv), Pavlo Kovach (27, Lviv) and Anton Varga (25, Lviv)), the Main Prize Winner, the jurors said: "We want to express our appreciation for the way in which collectives take position within the Ukrainian art scene and therewith point out that art is not an individualistic business but an engagement for society at large. We feel that the project of open group, exclusively for internal use, enacts this on many different levels. It connects Lviv with Kiev, it connects the people they encounter on the trip with an artistic project and it allows the visitors now to become a part of this mental journey. We are aware that what we see is not the work because the work is essentially a performative process, and that the different forms, video, photograph, book and the theatricality of it all are relative. Yet we value the precise and attentive way in which each element is translated and offered in its own form to us today. This one work makes it clear to us that there is a mature practice at hand here. As an international jury we are truly sad this is only for Internal use!"

Anna Zvyagintseva (28) received the first Special Prize of the PinchukArtCentre Prize 2015. The second Special Prize was awarded to Alina Kleitman (24). Besides the money part, which is UAH 60,000 (USD 2,400), the PinchukArtCentre will also offer one month international studio residence for each Winner.

The Public Choice Prize of UAH 25,000 (USD 1,000) also went to Anna Zvyagintseva. The winner of this nomination has been chosen based on the results of voting by the PinchukArtCentre visitors held from 31 October to 10 December 2015.

Awarding the first Special Prize to Anna Zvyagintseva, the jurors stated: "For the first special prize we award Anna Zvyagintseva. With her work Order of Things, the artist finds a language to translate a beautiful attention to the simple basics of life in to images that are compelling and that at the same time leave a sense of fragility, openness, loss and gain and the possibility of delicacy in how we relate to life. She proves that art in its aesthetic dimension can be political in the deepest sense of the word. Her artistic language is universal and subjective at the same time and so are the messages it conveys. The sensitivity of her drawing is juxtaposed by her choice of the material and she overcomes that divide by the way she handles the curving and imperfect welding of the metal."

Awarding the second Special Prize to Alina Kleitman, the Jury said: "For the second special prize we discussed a series of artists whom we all consider absolutely valid. We award this prize, for the freshness, the braveness and the integrity of her aesthetics, the visual intelligence, to Alina Kleitman. Hers is a radical and therewith erratic approach to life. With her film Super A Shave your Heart, she uses an honest language, avoiding any of the theatricality that is so often present in works that deal with human limits. She deals both with stereotypes and with urgent issues such as the position of women in the society of today and with the image that society projects on women. At the same time she is courageously making a personal statement involving among others her grandmother in a manner that is both tender and harsh."

The 16 nominees were shortlisted by an independent Selection Committee from about 800 applicants and include: Yevgenia Belorusets (34, Kyiv), Daniil Galkin (29, Dnipropetrovsk), Mykola Karabinovych (26, Odesa), Alina Kleitman (24, Kharkiv), Daria Koltsova (27, Kyiv), Kinder Album(32, Lviv), Sergiy Melnychenko (23, China, Chengdu), Roman Mykhailov (25, Kyiv),Sergiy Petlyuk (34, Lviv), Mykola Ridnyi (30, Kharkiv), Ivan Svitlychnyi (26, Kharkiv), Sergiy Yakimenko (27, Kharkiv), Kateryna Yermolaeva (30, Kyiv), Anna Zvyagintseva (28, Kyiv) and groups: Melnychuk-Burlaka Group (Ivan Melnychuk (33, Kyiv), Oleksandr Burlaka (33, Kyiv), theOpen Group (Yuriy Biley (27, Lviv), Pavlo Kovach (27, Lviv), Anton Varga (25, Lviv)).

Seven nominees are new to the PinchukArtCentre. The other nine shortlisted artists have been nominated for the PinchukArtCentre Prize in 2009, 2011 or 2013, namely: Yevgenia Belorusets (2013), Daniil Galkin (2011, 2013), Alina Kleitman (2011), Sergiy Petlyuk (2011), Mykola Ridnyi (2011, 2013), Ivan Svitlychnyi (2011, 2013), Anna Zvyagintseva (2013), Melnychuk-Burlaka Group (2013), and the Open Group (2013). Additionally, the Open Group and Daniil Galkin were awarded Special Prizes in the edition of PinchukArtCentre Prize in 2013.

Exhibition of the 16 shortlisted artists for the PinchukArtCentre Prize 2013 is open until 10 January 2016.

RELATED IMAGES and VIDEO

Images of the works of 16 nominees shortlisted for the PinchukArtCentre Prize 2015

Images/ Awarding of the Winners of the PinchukArtCentre Prize 2015

Video profiles of the Winners: 

Open Group
Anna Zvyagintseva