II ARTEINGENUA 2008 Prize

The Second ARTEINGENUA Prize will give the three winning artists the opportunity for a year long working partnership with ARTEINGENUA without making any exclusive commitment. This partnership will allow three artists (or groups of artists) to work on projects and cultural events which will be decided upon and organised together with ARTEINGENUA’s Artistic Management.

The competition includes an exhibition of works; a catalogue of all the works admitted to the competition; biographies and critical reviews.

The exhibition, adjudication and award ceremony will take place in an important venue in Italy yet to be decided.

There will be a carefully selected jury consisting of well-known personalities chosen from the following fields:

* Art criticism
* Journalism
* Academia
* Art Collecting
* Enterprise
* Architecture and design
* New media

Theme of the Competition

The proposed Second International ARTEINGENUA PRIZE 2008 Competition theme is:  PLAY THE GAME – get into the game with art

The game of art is a recurring feature in the history of art; a reference point for anthropology and aesthetics, and an element that represents every society and culture. And now this game has returned with even more complexity and facets in the search for contemporary artists.

Just think of the twentieth century, when avant-garde movements, like Futurism or Dada, experimented with concepts of irony, being lost, huge steps forward; even decontextualisation of the object/work. With these unexpected and apparently illogical actions, the artists provoked their audience into making their own position on this art, answering to it, reacting and interpreting the new languages of art they were presented with; playing the game.

In theatre, literature and cinema, and all of the entertainment industry, from Pirandello to Pinter and Chaplin to Monty Python, this game would strongly determine the revolution of expressive and creative artistic language and form that would be passed on to the artists of today.

In the 60s, Pop Art played with mass media and its icons and fetishes of the consumerist society. Conceptualists play with words and things, challenging the canon of art. Their experimentation used minimalist abstracts which played “seriously” with formal reductions and obsessive geometric repetitions. Then you have Land Art that plays with art in open spaces, in contact with an environment of which we constantly need to be more aware, held as it is in the cruel game between industry and nature. And post modernism plays with exasperated quotations throwing itself into the depths of history.

Today, what is a game for a young artist who is a member of the digital society, their mind constantly moving between the virtual world and reality, their gaze moves over to a world where the game of roles and the relationship between things seem to relate even more to unknown rules, following journeys that are fragmented, interrupted, fluid and suspended? Play the game. Play it this very minute,  while the possibilities are infinite, the language and material of art blend into a magma which is fascinating and complex and where it is more and more difficult to find certain answers. Play the game; accept the challenge of a present that is often only understandable through virtual eyes. It may be the only alternative for the artists/actors/players of the present.

ARTEINGENUA awaits your replies, your provocation and your re-actions. Your game, your rules.

Artists intending to participate in this Competition must send their entry by Friday 26 September, 2008.

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