NAK Neuer Aachener Kunstverein

Andreas Greiner, Karl Philips, Arjan Stockhausen

09 - 30 Nov 2014

ANDREAS GREINER, KARL PHILIPS, ARJAN STOCKHAUSEN
Prize For Young Art
9 - 30 November 2014

In 2014 NAK. Neuer Aachener Kunstverein and STAWAG Stadtwerke Aachen AG announced the Prize for Young Art for the second time. The Prize for Young Art is specifically aimed at young artists from the region around Aachen as well as the wider region of EUREGIO Maas-Rhein, and includes prize money of 3.000,- Euro as well as a catalogue production. The exhibition accompanying the prize presents works from this year’s winner Andreas Greiner from 09th of November until 30th of November 2014. Moreover, the two runner-up artists Karl Philips and Arjan Stockhausen will be part of the show.

The artistic approach of this year’s award recipient Andreas Greiner (*1979 in Aachen) experimentally links the act of creating art works with the field of natural scientific – and in particular biological – phenomena. Greiner’s take on nature and life as perpetual and contingent processes is directly expressed not only in terms of his concept of time-based sculptures, but also in the repeated integration of biological organisms as participatory co-authors of the artistic works. Within the scope of this constellation, works by Andreas Greiners quite frequently initiate a catalytic experience between the habits of subjective cognition and the phenomena of everyday life by marking inherent connections between the principles of aesthetic and scientific events.

The interventional-oriented art practice of Belgian artist Karl Philips (*1984 in Hasselt) is mainly characterized by the — at times contradictory — way in which it traces the hidden liminal spaces and boundaries of our everyday life. His performative actions in public spac e at the same time form the point of departure for installative works whose conceptual objectives are elaborated through the use of a wide range of media and which take into consideration a multiplicity of perspectives. In particular, his artistic strategy enables the works to consistently expose the constitutive mechanisms routinely at work beneath the surfaces of our cultural, social and economic present-day realities.

By contrast, the artistic approach of Arjan Stockhausen (*1992 in Alfter), that could be loosely described as form of a romantic conceptualism, is centered on current issues of sexuality, identity and body. Frequently incorporating a range of mediums, his works are based on a multifaceted investigation into the realm of physical and mental states in terms of their constitutive interdependency with the effects of social-cultural paradigms. In addition to methods of subjective introspection, his work is also characterized by an occasionally ironic, occasionally playful incorporation of everyday and pop-cultural phenomenon as well as a critical examination of art historical reference points and the specific potentials of mediums.
 

Tags: Andreas Greiner