1st Prize Winner Troels Wörsel
The Jury's Statement
"Troels Wörsel is awarded the Carnegie prize of SEK 500,000 for his group of paintings that are part of his continuous aspiration to transcend stylistic and other conventions that govern painting. We are confronted with paintings that cannot be classified according to any traditional motif. He is more interested in the internal relationships of painting, its interaction or resistance, the function of colour in the whole, how the figure relates to the background. In a masterly style, and with references to the abstract-romantic tradition, these works – painted on the unprimed back of the canvas and with hanging instructions clearly indicated – expose the process that the artist characterises as “the flow of paint in the flow of painting”. Painting is experienced as a field of information and a forum for discussion of the potential to create and convey meaning."
Troels Wörsel was born in 1950 in Århus, Denmark, and lives in Pietrasanta, Italy. As an autodidact artist he moved to Munich in the early 1980s and became part of the international art scene there. Over the years, Wörsel has quoted and incorporated highbrow and lowbrow in his paintings. His frequently ambiguous works confront the viewer with words, objects and settings from the artist’s own environment, in addition to references to the works of other artists. He produces his paintings rapidly, so as not to lose touch with them. But even the ostensibly hasty works display a great care over details. Painting holds infinite possibilities, and Wörsel makes good use of this potential.
Troels Wörsel has exhibited in galleries and museums throughout Europe, especially in Denmark, Germany and the USA, and is represented in numerous prestigious Danish, German and American museums.
Wörsel’s most recent works include a large-scale decoration for the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Southern Denmark in Odense. This decoration, consisting of several paintings which together cover 50 square metres, was inaugurated in the autumn of 2000. Read more about Troels Wörsel.
2nd Prize Winner Lena Cronqvist
The Jury's Statement
"Lena Cronqvist is awarded the Carnegie prize of SEK 300,000 for a group of paintings that manage to combine formal clarity with a tale of vulnerability and sorrow of unusual poignancy. Few contemporary artists succeed like Lena Cronqvist in upholding the great classical heritage of painting while investing new life in its imagery. She finds new images in the sub-conscious that we recognise as having universal relevance. This unique ability has made her paintings popular far beyond the circles in which contemporary art is usually appreciated."
Lena Cronqvist was born in Karlstad, Sweden, in 1938, and now lives in Stockholm and New York. She studied at the University College of Arts, Crafts and Design in Stockholm in 1958-59, and at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in 1959-64. She has been a member of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts since 1997. Lena Cronqvist’s oeuvre consists of paintings, drawings and sculptures. Her work has always been highly autobiographical, with psychologically charged images dealing with existential issues, her own experiences and close relationships, themes that are entirely personal but at the same time universal. In previous works she has expressed the vulnerability of the child in relation to adults, and vice versa. In the paintings in this exhibition, four self-portraits, Lena Cronqvist relates her sorrow over the death of her husband, the author Göran Tunström. Read more about Lena Cronqvist.
3rd Prize Winner Tal R
The Jury's Statement
"Tal R is awarded the Carnegie prize of SEK 200,000 for his recent large paintings. The artist demonstrates his mastery of the painting medium through an energetic brushwork that situates simple, roughly drawn figures across the canvas. A sensitivity to form is conveyed in the internal relations and placement of the figures, whose scale and shape contribute to simple yet laden images. These images may also be read as initiating narratives, where the canvas becomes a field for artistic storytelling. This is reinforced by Tal R’s rhetorical use of fields above and below the canvas that make visible traces of the painting act itself."
Tal R was born in 1967 in Tel Aviv, Israel, and lives in Copenhagen. In 1986-88, he studied at Billedeskolen in Copenhagen, and in 1994-2000 he was at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Art in Copenhagen. He was a guest professor at the Academy of Fine Art in Helsinki in 2000. Tal R’s works reflect his immediate surroundings and reality, and influences from his daily life fill the expressionist paintings. The narratives of the works are important but are seldom overly complicated or intellectual. Since the early 1990s, he has exhibited initially in Copenhagen, but over the last five years he has also exhibited at Louisiana in Humlebaek; Aarhus Kunstmuseum in Århus; the DCA in New York; Contemporary Fine Arts in Berlin; Gesellschaft für aktuelle Kunst, Bremen; and Victoria Miro Gallery in London. In 1998, Tal R was awarded the Horsens Konstmuseum prize, and in 1999 he won the Gauguin prize in Copenhagen. In 2002, he was chosen as Artist of the Year by Jyllandsposten. Tal R also participated in the Carnegie Art Award exhibitions in 1998 and 1999, and was awarded the scholarship for a young artist at the latter. Read more about Tal R.
Scholarship David Svensson
"David Svensson is awarded the Carnegie scholarship of SEK 50,000. Colour, light, texture, material sensibility, seeing – all essential ingredients of painting – are there in David Svensson’s works, and yet, remarkably, they can also be perceived simply as seductive interior decorating. With precision and a sense of poetry he examines one of the most closely-guarded boundaries of the art world, the one between art and design. Nonetheless, the result is so much more than an investigation protocol – namely, exuberant paintings in three dimensions!"
David Svensson was born in 1973 in Skillingaryd, Sweden. He now lives in Malmö. In 1993-95, he studied at the School of Design and Crafts (HDK), College of Graphic Design, in Gothenburg. Between 1995 and 1997 he was at the National Academy of Fine Art in Oslo. In 1997-98, he attended the Royal University College of Fine Arts in Stockholm, followed in 1998-2000 by studies at the Malmö Art Academy. In 2001, he was awarded the City of Malmö cultural scholarship as well as a grant from the Visual Arts Fund. In 2002, he obtained a studio grant in Qaqortoq, Greenland, from Nifca. For some time, David Svensson has been examining the grey-zone between art and design. He uses paint and colour in a remarkable way in his transcendental artworks. In smaller paintings the picture can be tightly woven with strips of dried acrylic paint, while the paint in the large work shown in the exhibition, Screen, is so loosely woven that we can see right through it – simultaneously an architectonic dividing wall and an unusual grid painting. In the work titled Eyes two black, convex circular paintings gaze back at the viewers – who can see themselves and the room reflected in the glossy paint – while Illuminator paints not only the entire surroundings red but also colours the viewer’s perception of the adjacent rooms. Read more about David Svensson.