The Young Masters Art Prize was established in 2009 by
Cynthia Corbett Gallery to
recognize emerging artists making innovative use of established techniques, and
is joined this year by the inaugural Young Masters Maylis Grand Ceramics Prize.
The 2014 winners—painter
and
ceramist
—apply
traditional art historical practices to contemporary visions. As art historian
and head judge Godfrey Barker
explains: “We
believe we have the best agenda of any art prize in the world—to build
21st-century originality on inspiration from the past.”
German artist Juergen Wolf inserts contemporary elements into his
landscape and
paintings.
In an untitled work from 2014, Wolf uses vibrant colors and broad brushstrokes
to render a broken-down house that is situated on a patchy yellow-green field.
The graffitied tag “SHOW ME YOUR SINS” appears scrawled across one wall, as if
to remind viewers that this is not a 19th-century landscape painting but
instead a modern representation of an abandoned structure.
In another untitled work, from 2013, Wolf builds up what would be
a classic tableau of sculptural busts if not for the bright red soccer ball
that pops up in the foreground. The combination of objects in the frame—a
bull’s head, a buddha sculpture, a Greek-seeming bust, the soccer ball—reads
like a cabinet of mismatched curiosities. It’s as if Wolf has grabbed the
tradition of still life by its horns and flipped it on its head, revealing a
new, absurdist underbelly. He
describes his process
as looking “ironically at icons, moments of
luck, [and] sadness” to reveal “impressions of historical and political reality
and fragments of the mental abyss.”
British ceramist Matt Smith makes functional and nonfunctional
objects with an impressive attention to detail. Pair of Wall Sconces (2014),
glazed in white and poised in perfect symmetry, presents two figures
surrounded by large animal heads and miniature gorillas. Candle-holding
components sit at the heads of both figures, rendering each faceless and void
of any specific identity. With Feast Part I (2014), a minimalist palette
of charcoal black sweeps over objects arranged on a silver plate stand. Sculpted
bottles, high relief frames, and two diametrically-opposed birds fit into each
other like an insignia or three-dimensional family crest. Despite its name,
there is a conspicuous lack of any actual food items. As viewers we are left to
wonder whether the exotic birds and decorative fixtures are the suggested
consumable goods, or if the feast is of something else entirely.
Wolf and Smith are
currently
showing their work in London, along with a set of shortlisted
artists, as part of the 2015 Young Masters International Tour. Works by a
number of highly-skilled artists are featured on the tour:
, who
created a technicolor, knit textile rendition of Michelangelo’s
David (1501-04);
Elisabeth
Caren, who made a series of photographs in the spirit of Sir John
Everett Millais’s
Ophelia (1851-2); and
, whose
striking peacock-feathered work references tapestry-making.