Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo presents works by the American duo Niko Karamyan and Tierney Finster, and by German artist Riccardo Paratore, winners of the first edition of the Re Rebaudengo Serpentine Grants prize in 2013. The exhibition is curated by Hans-Ulrich Obrist, Co-Director, Exhibitions and Programmes and Director of International Projects at Serpentine Gallery in London, and by Simon Castets, Director of the Swiss Institute in New York.
The prize is the result of a collaboration between Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo and the Serpentine Gallery. It was developed together with 89plus, a research project co-founded by Simon Castets and Hans Ulrich Obrist, which focuses on the generation of innovators born in or after 1989.
The competition involved submitting applications via the the emerging artist platform Discrit 89plus, hosted by DIS Magazine, a digital media platform which supports new creative practices. Two winners were selected, one by open public vote and the other by an international jury; the winners received a sum of money, which they used to produce the works that will be exhibited at the Foundation.
The duo Niko Karamyan (Hollywood, California, 1992) – Tierney Finster (Los Angeles, 1991), winner of the open public vote, will present a music video, Wicked Games, which is a follow-up to Can We Talk and Drop, the works they submitted to participate in the Prize. This trilogy, entitled Caught Feelings, explores the theme of love, which the artists define as a creative act, “the construction of personal fantasies in relation to our chosen Others – our often-unrequited beloveds”. Wicked Games leads to the end of the affair interpreted by the two artists, showing that all things, even the most beautiful and powerful, can have disorienting, overwhelming, sometimes scary sides.
Riccardo Paratore (Eutin, Germany, 1990), winner of the jury's prize, presents Sleeping is Production, a series of works dealing with the contemporary experience of travelling. The installation on display, which includes a group of paintings and a video, evokes the feelings of the estrangement and confusion caused by the constant displacement experienced by a large part of the world's population. The paintings employ airplane blankets as canvas, on which the artist scatters all sort of tiny objects that are commonly given as freebies by most airline companies. It's like the representation of a microcosm, a sort of memoir of the surreal and chaotic life we are forced to live.
