1st Prize Winner Karin Mamma Andersson
The Jury's Statement
"Karin Mamma Andersson is awarded the Carnegie Prize of SEK 1,000,000 for her imaginative revitalising of the narrative and atmospheric potential of painting. Her work fully exploits the capacity of painting to create visual worlds that are at once both familiar and fantastic, rooted in everyday corporeal and spatial experiences of figures and landscapes, yet taking off into the synthetic domain of image signs combined at will. A particularly striking feature of her work is the frequent representation of paintings and other image surfaces within the pictorial space. Through a sophisticated and often surprising use of pictures within pictures, she produces a heightened sense of the visual and cultural specificity of painting and its evocative and persuasive powers."
Karin Mamma Andersson was born in 1962 in Luleå and lives in Stockholm. From 1986 to 1993 she studied at the Royal University College of Fine Arts in Stockholm.
For many years, the main themes in Karin Mamma Andersson’s narrative paintings were Nordic landscapes with strains of folk tale and myth. In latter years, however, the landscapes have given way to interiors, but traces of nature are still perceptible in one form or another. Her works incorporate complex references to art history, contemporary mass media, and wholly personal experiences. The carefully formulated titles add a further dimension to the narrative aspect of the paintings.
Karin Mamma Andersson’s works have been shown in galleries and museums in the Nordic countries since the mid-1980s and have won international recognition, especially in London, Berlin and New York, in recent years. She represented Sweden at the Venice Biennale in 2003 and participated in the prestigious Carnegie International in Pittsburgh in 2004. Karin Mamma Andersson was also among the artists selected for the Carnegie Art Award exhibitions in 1998 and 2000. She is represented in several major museums and institutions, including the MOCA, Los Angeles; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Göteborgs Konstmuseum, Gothenburg; and the Swedish National Public Art Council.
2nd Prize Winner Eggert Pétursson
The Jury's Statement
"Eggert Pétursson is awarded the Carnegie prize of SEK 600,000 for his singular display of vegetation at close range, which has been his subject matter for as long as he can remember. Seen at a distance, his paintings seem to be abstractions, but close up they dissolve in endless realistic details of easily identifiable plants and flowers. Regarding himself as a conceptual artist, Pétursson has been able to develop his modest theme in such an extensive and imaginative way that it tends to become limitless in time, space, size and expression."
Eggert Pétursson was born in 1956 in Reykjavik, where he currently lives. Between 1979 and 1981 he attended the Jan van Eyck Akademie in Maastricht, after studying at the Icelandic School of Arts and Crafts in 1976-79 and the Reykjavik Art School in 1974-78.
Pétursson’s unique flower paintings are like no other depictions of landscapes or vegetation. He himself describes them as “fabricated nature”, and in his works every detail, every stalk, petal and leaf, is meticulously portrayed. The perspectives are vertiginous, not in the normal sense but in the subtle depth he creates with his painstaking and veritably three-dimensional rendering of the Icelandic flora.
Eggert Pétursson has been exhibiting his works since the 1970s, mainly in Iceland but also in Europe, the USA and Japan. In Iceland his works are shown at Galleri i8, which will also be exhibiting his paintings at Art Basel Miami in December. Pétursson is represented in several of Iceland’s more prestigious museums and institutions, including the National Gallery of Iceland, the Reykjavik Art Museum and the Living Art Museum in Reykjavik, the Kopavogur Art Museum and other public collections, such as the Landsbanki Islands in Reykjavik. Eggert Pétursson also participated in the Carnegie Art Award 2004 exhibition.
3rd Prize Winner Petra Lindholm
The Jury's Statement
"Petra Lindholm is awarded the Carnegie prize of SEK 400,000 for her nocturnal video narrative Until (2004), with its painterly imagery and complex, non-linear narrative. Lindholm’s images entice the viewer to dwell on the individual visual elements, while retaining an awareness of being in the middle of a story. The temporal dimension in the film combines a rhizomatic progression, where parallel narrative elements cross, and a circular development, where the beginning is also the end. Like a painting, Lindholm’s video work needs to be seen several times, before its beauty and inherent clarity is fully revealed."
Petra Lindholm was born in Karjaa, Finland, in 1973 and now lives in Stockholm. In 1994-96 she studied at the Swedish School of Art in Nykarleby, Finland. She was an exchange student at the Akademie Minerva in Groningen, the Netherlands, in 1999 and studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki in 2000. Between 1996 and 2001 she attended the Royal University College of Fine Arts in Stockholm.
Lindholm produces poetic video works that often convey an intimate atmosphere with a painterly quality. Until follows a young woman through the city at night. With shady, desolate settings, closely intertwined with Lindholm’s soft, melancholy music and singing, and a muted telephone conversation between the woman and a man, Lindholm conjures up a charged, dreamlike quality. Music and film, but also everyday events and stories, are vital sources of inspiration to Lindholm, who composes the soundtracks herself. The work featured in this exhibition is the third and final part of a triptych on loneliness.
Since graduating from the Royal University College of Fine Arts, Petra Lindholm has participated in numerous exhibitions and film festivals in Europe, the USA and China. She has been awarded several Finnish and Swedish grants for her work, and in 2003-4 she was an artist-in-residence at the ISCP in New York, funded by IASPIS. She is represented in the Moderna Museet collection in Stockholm and at Pro Artibus in Helsinki.
Scholarship Sirous Namazi
The Jury's Statement
"The Carnegie scholarship of SEK 100,000 is awarded to the Swedish artist Sirous Namazi for two works which both, despite their difference in technique and size, revolve around the difficulties of representation and communication. With unfailing humour, Namazi pairs the aesthetics of minimalism with the ideology of failure, and the result is often an illusion on the margins of painting."
Sirous Namazi was born in 1970 in Kerman, Iran, and lives in Stockholm. He studied at the Malmö Art Academy between 1995 and 1998.
Based on his own experiences, Namazi creates works that challenge issues of identity and origin. A common trait of his works, be they sculptures, paintings, videos or installations, is that everyday objects or materials are presented and combined in new contexts with inherent references to current social issues as well as to the history of art. The work in this exhibition, Sign, which alludes to the large billboards lining the motorways, does not, however, advertise any message. Instead, the viewer is confronted with a brightly illuminated blank surface which, rather than delivering any answers, poses questions and reflects the spectator’s own expectations.
Since his debut show in Malmö in 1994, Namazi has had exhibitions mainly in Sweden, including Moderna Museet in 2003, but also elsewhere in Europe. He is represented in the Moderna Museet collection in Stockholm and at Dunkers Kulturhus in Helsingborg.