December 3, 2017 – February 4, 2018

The 36th art prize »junger westen«, awarded in 2017 for sculpture and installation, goes to Max Leiß. Born in Bonn in 1982, Leiß studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Karlsruhe and the École Nationale Superièure des Beaux-Arts in Paris between 2006 and 2012. He lives and works in Basel, Marseille and Oberammergau.

‘Max Leiß creates highly precise works, which he places in a spatial and thematic relationship to one another. In his spatial installations, he establishes spatial relationships and thus also an imaginative, sometimes narrative structure. Materiality and form remind us of a tangibility that we recognise from our everyday lives. A blue steel frame becomes a slide in our imagination, a fragment in the wall separates the space like a backyard and realises a constellation that permanently evokes function. However, our need for usefulness is positively disappointed: the work refuses a concrete use in favour of a haptic and intellectual independence.’ This is the reasoning of the jury, which not only chose this year's prize winner, but also selected a total of twenty artists for the exhibition.

Besides Max Leiß the following artists participate on the exhibition on the occasion of the award ceremony on december 3, 2018 in the Kunsthalle: Malte Bartsch, Pachet Fulmen, Anna Grath, Hannah Hallermann, HazMatLab, Max Hölter, Bastian Hoffmann, Justyna Janetzek, Damaris Kerkhoff, Anne Kristin Kristiansen, David Kroell, Daniel Kuge, Agnes Lammert, Isabel Nuno de Buen, Mira Sasse, Raphael Sbrzesny, Elisabeth Stumpf, Jessica Twitchell und Katharina Zimmerhackl. 

The art prize »junger westen« is the first sponsorship prize for fine art to be awarded by a German municipality since 1945. Endowed with 10,000 euros, it is awarded every two years as the City of Recklinghausen's sponsorship prize for fine art with the support of the Stadtsparkasse Recklinghausen cultural foundation.

This years jury consisted of Prof. Bogomir Ecker, Düsseldorf, Georg Elben, Skulpturenmuseum Glaskasten Marl, Dr. Anna Fricke, Museum Folkwang Essen, Dr. Marianne Wagner, LWL-Museum für Kunst und Kultur - Westfälisches Landesmuseum + Skulptur Projekte Münster, as well as  Christoph Tesche, Mayor of the city of Recklinghausen, Holger Freitag, Chairman of the Committee for Culture, Science and City History of the City of Recklinghausen and Dr. Hans-Jürgen Schwalm and Kerstin Weber, Kunsthalle Recklinghausen.

Accompanying to the exhibition a catalogue will be published featuring all exhibiting artists.

The exhibition is sponsored by the Sparkasse Vest Recklinghausen.