Art Prize »junger westen« 2023 – Sculpture and Installation

3 December 2023 - 11 February 2024

Art Award »junger westen« 2023 goes to Mona Schulzek.

On Friday and Saturday, 1 and 2 September 2023, the jury met for the 39th Art Award »junger westen«, this year announced for "Sculpture and Installation".
From 530 applications, they nominated 22 artists for the exhibition, which will be shown from 3 December 2023 to 11 February 2024: Eliza Ballesteros (Düsseldorf), Noémi Barbaglia (Hamburg), Rebekka Benzenberg (Berlin), Marta Dyachenko (Berlin), Fabian Friese (Cologne), Gerrit Frohne-Brinkmann (Hamburg), Isabella Fürnkäs (Düsseldorf), Marc Norbert Hörler (Berlin), Lucia Kempkes (Berlin), Ju Young Kim (Munich), Maria Clara Kulemeyer (Cologne), Julia Miorin (Leipzig), Esper Postma (Berlin), Miriam Schmitz (Karlsruhe), Mona Schulzek (Düsseldorf), Tatjana Stürmer (Zwingenberg), Tatjana Vall (Munich), Emil Walde (Düsseldorf), Denise Werth (Hagen) and Karla Zipfel (Hamburg), as well as two artistic positions invited for performances in the sense of an expanded concept of sculpture: Moritz Riesenbeck (Düsseldorf) and Caner Teker (Düsseldorf).

At the same time, they chose Mona Schulzek (*1992, Moers) from Düsseldorf as the winner of the art prize endowed with 20,000 euros.

As introduced for the first time in 2021, the award winner will be given the entire upper floor of the Kunsthalle as a venue for the individual presentation of the corresponding works.

"The jury unanimously chose Mona Schulzek," says museum director Dr. des. Nico Anklam, "because her work exemplifies what a sculptural practice in the categories 'sculpture, sculpture, installation' can achieve today: to give contemporary impulses for what we try to understand as space. Mona Schulzek's works touch on discourses immanent to the art system but reach beyond it into various areas of life.
In her installations, she makes use of various media and disciplines, such as photography or the natural sciences. This can be seen, for example, in her 'Outer Space Transmitter' since 2021. In it, Schulzek works with a space that surrounds us, which both actually exists and addresses the imaginary: outer space. Her art is all-encompassing, from the construction of a transmitter as a sculptural object, to the development of an 'extraterrestrial alphabet', to obtaining a certified radio licence. She is thus remarkably consistent in her sculptural and conceptual practice," Recklinghausen Kunsthallen director Nico Anklam continues.

"As the winner of the 2023 »junger westen« art prize, Mona Schulzek joins a long list of renowned artists whose careers are linked to the Kunsthalle. This municipal commitment goes back a long way; as the first municipal prize after the Second World War, history was made early on in Recklinghausen," says Christoph Tesche, Mayor of the City of Recklinghausen.
Mona Schulzek completed her studies at the Düsseldorf Art Academy in 2023 as a master student of Gregor Schneider. She was already awarded a prize for her Outer Space Transmitter in 2022 and received the Max Ernst Scholarship in 2019. Her works are represented in the collection of the Kunstmuseum Bochum and the Max Ernst Museum Brühl. She has already had solo exhibitions at home and abroad, including France, Austria and Spain, among others.

The members of the jury this year were: Prof.in Dr. Martina Dobbe (Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art History, Kunstakademie Düsseldorf), Dr. Stefanie Kreuzer (Exhibition Director and Curator of Contemporary Art, Modern Art Collection, Kunstmuseum Bonn from October 2023 Director of the Kunstmuseum Mülheim an der Ruhr), Max Leiß (Sculptor, Art Prize Winner »junger westen« 2017), Dr. Sandra Beate Reimann (Curator Museum Tinguely Basel), 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), Dr. des. Nico Anklam (Director of the Museums of the City of Recklinghausen) and as a substitute Kerstin Weber (Research Associate, Kunsthalle Recklinghausen).

The art prize »junger westen« is the first prize for the visual arts to be awarded by a German municipality after 1945.
It is awarded as a sponsorship prize by the City of Recklinghausen with the support of the Cultural Foundation of the Stadtsparkasse Recklinghausen. Thanks to additional support from the Rotary Club Recklinghausen and the Ulrike and Bernd Tönjes Foundation, the prize money could be increased this year for the first time from 10,000 to 20,000 EUR. This increase will remain for the next competitions until 2031.
530 artists applied - over a 100 more than in 2021. Those born in 1988 or later were eligible to take part, and they also had to be resident in the Federal Republic of Germany or have German citizenship.

The exhibition will be opened with an award ceremony on Saturday, 2 December 2023 at 5 pm in the Kunsthalle, and will then run from 3 December 2023 to 11 February 2023.

A catalogue will be published.