Art Prize »junger westen« 2019

Painting 

Dezember 1, 2019 - February 2, 2020

The 37th  »junger westen« art prize, awarded for painting in 2019, goes to Ugur Ulusoy. Born in Oberhausen in 1984, he studied architecture at the TU Braunschweig from 2005 to 2013, industrial design from 2013 to 2016 and finally fine art at the HBK Braunschweig from 2016 to 2019. Ulusoy is currently a master student of Professor Hartmut Neumann at the HBK Braunschweig and is completing a postgraduate year with Professor Franz Ackermann at the Kunstakademie Karlsruhe. He lives and works in Braunschweig and Karlsruhe.

The jury praised the great aesthetic power of his works, which range from classic panel paintings to expansive, painterly installations. In his paintings, Ugur Ulusoy develops ‘hybrid worlds that are open to all and require no clear localisation.’ (Ulusoy) He often uses fabrics from his Turkish-Kurdish-Azerbaijani family as painting grounds and materials for his painterly spaces, which are reminiscent of stage sets or dioramas. An important basis for him is the theory of the ‘third place’, which was founded by the Indian scientist Homi K. Bhabha: ‘A place where different cultures meet at eye level to jointly redefine symbols and their meaning in order to break stereotypes and the associated power structures.’ (Ulusoy) 

This year, 495 artists applied. The competition was open to artists born in or after 1984 who are German citizens or resident in the Federal Republic of Germany. The jury not only selected this year's winner, but also nominated a total of 21 artists for the exhibition, which will open at the award ceremony on Sunday, 1 December at 11 a.m. in the Kunsthalle.

This year's jury included the painters Professor Karin Kneffel, Academy of Fine Arts Munich, and Professor Julia Schmidt, Münster Art Academy, Katia Baudin, Director of the Kunstmuseen Krefeld, and Roland Nachtigäller, Director of the Marta Herford, Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, 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, Kunsthalle Recklinghausen. 

The »junger westen« art prize is the first sponsorship prize for the visual arts to be awarded by a German municipality since 1945. Endowed with 10,000 euro, 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.

For the exhibition of the art prize »junger westen 2019« the following artists have been selected:

Javkhlan Ariunbold

Fakhri Bohang

Paul Czerlitzki

Linda Ebert

Hanna Kaminski

Judith Kaminski

Arezoo Molaei

Lisa Sinan Mrozinski

Kriz Olbricht

Filiz Özcelik

Beatrice Richter

Max Schaffer

Sven Scharfenberg

Jeehye Song

Manuel Stehli

Clemens Tremmel

Sophie Ullrich

Ugur Ulusoy

Lea Wächter

Anja Warzecha

Rebekka von Zimmermann