2015.10.29 Thu, by
Six finalists Selected for the Hugo Boss Prize 2016

[press release]

Six finalists have been selected for the Hugo Boss Prize 2016, the biennial award established in 1996 to recognize artists whose work is among the most innovative and influential of our time. Nancy Spector, Deputy Director and Jennifer and David Stockman Chief Curator, Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, and chair of the jury, today announced the finalists chosen by a panel of international critics and curators. Over the past two decades juries have identified and selected as finalists paradigm-shifting artists from around the world, recognizing the achievements of both emerging and established figures, and setting no parameters in terms of age, gender, or medium.

The following artists are finalists for the Hugo Boss Prize 2016:

• Tania Bruguera (b. 1968, Havana)
• Mark Leckey (b. 1964, Birkenhead, UK)
• Ralph Lemon (b. 1952, Cincinnati)
• Laura Owens (b. 1970, Euclid, Ohio)
• Wael Shawky (b. 1971, Alexandria, Egypt)
• Anicka Yi (b. 1971, Seoul)

“Promoting the most innovative cultural production continues to be at the core of the Guggenheim’s institutional mission, and for the past twenty years, the Hugo Boss Prize has given us the opportunity to identify and honor artists who make a lasting impact on the landscape of contemporary art,” said Nancy Spector. “We are grateful for the sustained enthusiasm of Hugo Boss for a project that acknowledges today’s most prescient creative voices.”

The prize, administered by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, has become an integral part of the Guggenheim’s contemporary art programming. The winner is awarded a $100,000 cash prize and featured in a solo exhibition at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. The Hugo Boss Prize catalogues, which have evolved over the years into ambitious collaborations between curators, artists, and designers, form a key component of the program’s legacy. The Hugo Boss Prize 2016 winner will be announced in the fall of 2016, and the exhibition will be held in 2017.

“The Hugo Boss Prize has developed into a renowned accolade over the past two decades, and we are proud to celebrate its 20th anniversary next year. Together with the Guggenheim Foundation, we have since honored many excellent and successful artists,” said Claus-Dietrich Lahrs, Chairman and CEO, HUGO BOSS AG. “Our sincerest congratulations go out to our nominees for 2016.”

The Hugo Boss Prize 2016 Short List

Tania Bruguera Tatlin’s Whisper #5, 2008 Mounted police, crowd control techniques, audience, overall dimensions variable Installation view: UBS Openings: Live the Living Currency, Tate Modern, London, 2008 Photo: Sheila Burnet Courtesy the artist

Tania Bruguera
Tatlin’s Whisper #5, 2008
Mounted police, crowd control techniques, audience, overall dimensions variable Installation view: UBS Openings: Live the Living Currency, Tate Modern, London, 2008 Photo: Sheila Burnet
Courtesy the artist

Tania Bruguera (b. 1968, Havana) lives and works in various cities depending on the location of her long-term projects. In her politically driven, performance-based social practice, Bruguera activates communities through participatory projects that she categorizes as arte útil (useful art). Bruguera’s activism calls attention to injustice and advocates social change, as in Immigrant Movement International, which operates as a community center representing the interests of immigrant populations in Queens, New York.

Solo exhibitions of Bruguera’s work have been presented at the Malmö Konsthall, Sweden (2015); Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Netherlands (2013); Queens Museum of Art, New York (2013); Tate Modern, London (2012); Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (2010); Beirut Art Center (2007); Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna (2006); Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Havana (2004); San Francisco Art Institute (2002); and Centro de Arte Contemporáneo Wifredo Lam, Havana (1996), among other venues. Bruguera’s art has been included in group exhibitions such as the Venice Biennale (2015); Under the Same Sun: Art from Latin America Today, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2014); Revolution Not Televised, Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York (2012); Riwaq Biennial, Ramallah, Palestine (2009); Gwangju Biennial, South Korea (2008); Moscow Biennial of Contemporary Art (2007); Istanbul Biennial (2003); Documenta, Kassel, Germany (2002); SITE Santa Fe Biennial (1999); Johannesburg Biennial (1997); São Paulo Biennial (1996); New Art from Cuba, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London (1995); and Havana Biennial(1994).

Mark Leckey GreenScreenRefrigeratorAction, 2010 Installation view: Gavin Brown’s enterprise, 2010 Samsung refrigerator, rear screen projection rig, digital video, green screen set, PA, can of coolant Courtesy the artist and Gavin Brown’s enterprise

Mark Leckey
GreenScreenRefrigeratorAction, 2010
Installation view: Gavin Brown’s enterprise, 2010
Samsung refrigerator, rear screen projection rig, digital video, green screen set, PA, can of coolant Courtesy the artist and Gavin Brown’s enterprise

Mark Leckey (b. 1964, Birkenhead, UK) lives and works in London. Leckey’s fluid practice ranges across video, sculpture, music, performance, installations, and the exhibition format. His work unravels the entwined forces of desire, imagination, and cultural allegiance that shape our everyday experience, absorbing both rarified and lowbrow references into a unique artistic vocabulary.

Leckey’s work has been presented in solo exhibitions at Secession, Vienna (2015); Haus der Kunst, Munich (2015); Kunsthalle Basel (2015); WIELS Contemporary Art Centre, Brussels (2014); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2013); Serpentine Gallery, London (2011); Institute of Contemporary Art, London (2009); Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2008); Tate Britain, London (2003); and Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich (2003). Leckey’s work has also been included in group exhibitions such as Carnegie International, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh (2013); Venice Biennale (2013); Ghosts in the Machine, New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York (2012); Push and Pull, Tate Modern, London (2011); Gwangju Biennial, South Korea (2010); Pictures in Motion: Artists & Video/Film, Museum Ludwig, Cologne (2010); Turner Prize, Tate Britain, London (2008); Yokohama Triennial (2008); Tate Triennial, Tate Britain, London (2006); Istanbul Biennial (2005); Manifesta, San Sebastián, Spain (2004); and Protest & Survive, Whitechapel Gallery, London (2000).

Ralph Lemon Untitled, 2010 Archival pigment print, 40 x 40 inches Courtesy the artist

Ralph Lemon
Untitled, 2010
Archival pigment print, 40 x 40 inches Courtesy the artist

Ralph Lemon (b. 1952, Cincinnati) lives and works in New York. Lemon is a choreographer, writer, director, and visual artist whose interdisciplinary performance projects draw on political histories and personal relationships to illuminate the complexity and raw beauty of the human experience. Lemon combines dance, film, text, music, and sculptural installation in evocative programs that explore themes of identity, loss, and the body.

Lemon is Artistic Director of Cross Performance. His most recent projects include Scaffold Room (2015); Four Walls (2012); and How Can You Stay in The House All Day and Not Go Anywhere? (2008–10), a work that features live performance, film, and visual art and toured the United States. Lemon has curated the performance series Some sweet day at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2012) and I Get Lost at Danspace Project, New York (2010). His solo visual art exhibitions include 1856 Cessna Road, Studio Museum in Harlem, New York (2012); How Can You Stay in the House All Day and Not Go Anywhere?, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco (2010); (the efflorescence of) Walter, Contemporary Art Center, New Orleans (2008), The Kitchen, New York (2007), and Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2006); and The Geography Trilogy, Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery, Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut (2001). Group exhibitions featuring Lemon’s work include Move: Choreographing You, Hayward Gallery, London (2010) and The Record: Contemporary Art and Vinyl, Nasher Museum of Art, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina (2010).

Laura Owens Untitled, 2014 Oil, Flashe, and silkscreen ink on linen, 137.5 x 120 inches Courtesy the artist / Gavin Brown’s enterprise, New York / Sadie Coles HQ, London / Capitain Petzel, Berlin / Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne

Laura Owens
Untitled, 2014
Oil, Flashe, and silkscreen ink on linen, 137.5 x 120 inches
Courtesy the artist / Gavin Brown’s enterprise, New York / Sadie Coles HQ, London / Capitain Petzel, Berlin / Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne

Laura Owens (b. 1970, Euclid, Ohio) lives and works in Los Angeles. For the past two decades, Owens’s influential work has questioned the parameters and possibilities for making and viewing a painting today. She has continually shifted the terms of her practice, incorporating figuration, abstraction, digital techniques, and gestural mark making into multivalent compositions that confound expectations of pictorial space.

Owens’s work has been presented in solo exhibitions at Secession, Vienna (2015); Kunstmuseum Bonn (2011); Kunsthalle Zürich (2006); Camden Arts Centre, London (2006); Milwaukee Art Museum (2003); Aspen Art Museum, Colorado (2003); Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2003); and Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston (2001), among other venues. Owens’s art has also been featured in group exhibitions such as The Forever Now, Museum of Modern Art, New York (2014); Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2014); The Spectacular of Vernacular, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2011); Undiscovered Country, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2004); Whitney Biennial (2004); Public Offerings, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2001); Carnegie International, Carnegie Museum, Pittsburgh (1999); and Vertical Painting Show, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center (1997). She is the founder of 356 S. Mission Rd., a contemporary art exhibition space in downtown Los Angeles.

Wael Shawky Cabaret Crusades: The Path to Cairo, 2012 HD video, Color, Sound, 58min Courtesy Sfeir-Semler Gallery

Wael Shawky
Cabaret Crusades: The Path to Cairo, 2012 HD video, Color, Sound, 58min
Courtesy Sfeir-Semler Gallery

Wael Shawky (b. 1971, Alexandria, Egypt) lives and works in Alexandria, Egypt. Shawky works in multiple mediums—notably film, performance, sculpture, and drawing—to locate the roots of current geopolitical realities in the distant and heavily mediated past. Describing himself as a translator of cultural narratives and assumptions, he draws on mythical and historical sources to create indelible visual experiences that oscillate between pathos, humor, beauty, and horror.

Shawky has had solo exhibitions at MATHAF: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha, Qatar (2015); MoMA PS1, New York (2015); Serpentine Gallery, London (2013); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2013); Kunst-Werke Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2012); Townhouse Gallery for Contemporary Art, Cairo (2009 and 2008); and Kunsthalle Winterthur, Switzerland (2007). Shawky’s work has been featured in major group exhibitions such as the Istanbul Biennial (2015); Manifesta, Saint Petersburg, Russia (2014); Sydney Biennial (2014); Sharjah Biennial, United Arab Emirates (2013); Gwangju Biennial, South Korea (2012); Documenta, Kassel, Germany (2012); Marrakech Biennial, Morocco (2012); Egyptian Pavilion, Alexandria Biennial (2009); Riwaq Biennial, Ramallah, Palestine (2009); Tarjama/Translation, Queens Museum of Art, New York (2009); Riwaq Biennial (2007); Istanbul Biennial (2005); Venice Biennale (2003); and International Cairo Biennial (1996). In 2010 Shawky established MASS Alexandria, a studio and study program for artists in Egypt.

Anicka Yi Installation view: 7,070,430K of Digital Spit, Kunsthalle Basel, Basel, 2015 Courtesy 47 Canal, New York, and Kunsthalle Basel, Basel Photo: Philipp Hänger

Anicka Yi
Installation view: 7,070,430K of Digital Spit, Kunsthalle Basel, Basel, 2015 Courtesy 47 Canal, New York, and Kunsthalle Basel, Basel
Photo: Philipp Hänger

Anicka Yi (b. 1971, Seoul) lives and works in New York. Yi combines and contrasts organic and synthetic materials in distinctive, immersive installations that explore hybridity and entropy as their perishable elements rot, decay, and ferment. Yi’s visceral, alchemical concoctions arrest the senses; some of her projects incorporate food items and cooking processes, while others are designed to emanate carefully calibrated scents.

Yi has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Kunsthalle Basel (2015); MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts (2015); The Kitchen, New York (2015); and Cleveland Museum of Art (2014). The artist’s work has been included in group exhibitions such as Under the Clouds, Museu Serralves, Porto, Portugal (2015); THEM, Schinkel Pavillon, Berlin (2015); Taipei Biennial (2014); Lyon Biennial (2014); Love of Technology, Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami (2013); das Ding!, Swiss Institute, New York (2013); Looking Back, the 6th White Columns Annual, White Columns, New York (2011); SKIN SO SOFT, Gresham’s Ghost, New York (2011); 179 Canal / Anyways, White Columns, New York (2010); and Today and Everyday, X Initiative, New York (2009).