1st Prize Winner Torsten Andersson
The Jury's Statement
"Torsten Andersson is awarded the Carnegie prize of SEK 1,000,000 for his matchless oeuvre of painting that consolidates two absolute opposites, the general and the personal. Torsten Andersson has worked indefatigably over 40 years to formulate this paradox, a personal language. The paintings he exhibits prove that he has succeeded! The result is energetic, wonderfully material and absolutely unique!"
Torsten Andersson 1926-2009. He studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm from 1946 to 1950, and at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen in 1947. He was appointed professor at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm in 1960, but left this position in 1966 after attempting to reform the institution’s teaching methods.
Since the mid-1980s, Torsten Andersson’s work has focussed on the two-dimensional portrayal of three-dimensional objects, which has led to the acquisition and creation of a language all his own. Subsequently, he has sought to make the break with traditional painting this process entails, a recurrent theme of his work. In the exhibition two pairs of very different works are on show: the first of these forms part of an extensive series of portraits of sculptures whose intense presence and volume defy the level surface of the canvas. The other two are more architectural in character and link up with his most recent paintings, containing references to more personal experience.
Andersson’s work has been exhibited at galleries and museums since the mid-1950s. He took part in the 1954 Biennale held in São Paulo and participated in the Venice Biennale of 1964. He is represented by Brändström and Stene in Stockholm. Andersson’s work is represented in such museums as the Moderna Museet in Stockholm and Malmö Art Museum. Torsten Andersson also took part in the Carnegie Art Award of 1998 when he was awarded the third prize.
2nd Prize Winner Jesper Just
The Jury's Statement
"Jesper Just is awarded the Carnegie prize of SEK 600,000 for his video work A Vicious Undertow. The timing and rhythm in Just’s film is characterised by a lingering narrative. The visual side of the film evokes a feeling that there is more going on than the film reveals. Just has a masterly ability to create visual scenes that amaze us with their emotional intensity. We are immersed in the mood and yet repeatedly surprised by the sequence of the events."
Jesper Just was born in 1974 in Copenhagen, where he also resides. He studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen from 1997 to 2003.
Jesper Just creates narrative films that possess a magically seductive visual language and which deal with and explore themes such as identity and human relationships, primarily male gender roles and relations between men. Just serves as both director and editor of his films and employs professional actors, singers and technicians for the production of his works. The narratives of his films take place in existing environments of very varied kinds. They make references to various film genres such as musicals, dramatic pieces or film noir, and the evocative music that accompanies them always plays a key role. Their dense atmosphere and an explicit tension between object and subject mean that, as a viewer, one has the feeling of experiencing a mysterious fragment of a complex story, whose scale can only be guessed at.
Exhibitions of Just’s work have been held all over the world since 1992. He is represented by Galleri Christina Wilson in Copenhagen and the Perry Rubenstein Gallery in New York. His work is represented in major museums and collections such as the Arken Museum of Modern Arts, Ishøj; AROS Aarhus Kunstmuseum, Aarhus; Malmö Konstmuseum; Carnegie Museum, Pittsburgh; Castello di Rivoli, Turin and Tate Modern, London.
3rd Prize Winner John Kørner
The Jury's Statement
"John Kørner is awarded the Carnegie prize of SEK 400,000 for a series of new paintings that explore the expressive possibilities that painting offers today with playfulness and precision. Displaying technical mastery and ironic nerve, Kørner’s paintings mine the more recent history of painting and manage to unite a grotesque visual humour and profound existential and metaphysical questions."
John Kørner was born in Aarhus in 1967 and lives in Copenhagen. He studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen from 1992 to 1998.
Displaying an open attitude to painting and its tradition, the primary focus of John Kørner’s work as an artist is on painting. Characteristic of his work are expressive paintings which are often incorporated into complex installations or stagings, in which they come to form part of a greater whole and through which the viewer is also made to feel that he or she has become part of the work to a very considerable degree. Even though the starting-point for his paintings can be an issue of political or social nature, the painting itself is an intuitive process in which feeling plays a significant role. By selecting alternative environments or creating new situations for the encounter with his art, Kørner explores how and what his works are able to communicate to the viewer and how to meet the challenge of creating works that a wider audience can relate to.
Since leaving the Royal Academy, Kørner has taken part in numerous exhibitions mainly in Europe. He is represented by the Victoria Miro Gallery in London. Kørner’s work is represented in a number of major museums and collections in Denmark, England and the United States, including Arken Museum of Modern Art, Ishøj; AROS Aarhus Kunstmuseum, Aarhus; the Saatchi Collection, London and the Rubell Family Collection, Miami.
Scholarship Nathalie Djurberg
The Jury's Statement
"The Carnegie scholarship of SEK 100,000 is awarded to Nathalie Djurberg for her animated film New Movements in Fashion, which superimposes the style-worlds of painting and fashion in a completely unique manner. With razor-sharp imagination and grotesque comedy, Djurberg conjures up the dark undertow of contemporary visual culture."
Nathalie Djurberg was born in Lysekil in 1978 and lives in Berlin. She studied at the University College of Fine Art in Malmö between 1997 and 2002, at Hovedskou’s Art School in Gothenburg from 1995 to 1995, and in the art education programme of Folkuniversitetet in Gothenburg from 1994 to 1995.
Nathalie Djurberg creates distinctive animated films that oscillate between the absurdly playful and the uncomfortably menacing. Initially the apparently comic figures of models draw a delighted smile from the viewer, which becomes harder to maintain as a feeling of disquiet creeps over him or her. The traditional technique and imaginative playfulness of her work readily call puppet theatre and silent films to mind, an effect which is intensified by the music, which is specially composed by Hans Berg. These critical and, in recent years, increasingly political films involve subjects such as forbidden fantasies, sexuality, violence, guilt, and yet – although they deal with the darker aspects of human behaviour – they are always laced with a generous helping of humour, and the underdog often ends up the victor. On show in the exhibition is New Movements in Fashion, a film that contains an unusually large number of references to painting.
Since leaving art college, Djurberg has taken part in exhibitions in Europe, the United States and Asia. She is represented by the Giò Marconi Gallery in Milan. Djurberg’s work is represented in the collections of among others Moderna Museet in Stockholm.