The winner has been selected by Carlo Bach, artistic director of illycaffè, Sarah Cosulich, director of Artissima and Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev director of Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea – GAM.
The international jury, composed of Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev (Director, Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea – GAM, Rivoli-Torino), Bart van der Heide (Chief curator, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam), Verena Hein (Curator, Museum Villa Stuck, Munich), Nicoletta Fiorucci (Collector and Founder, Fiorucci Art Trust, London) has chosen the winner from a shortlist of 20 artists with the following motivation:
“The jury awards the 2016 Illy Prize to Cécile B. Evans, because her work offers a vision and a form for the future in which the interface between the digital and the corporeal dimensions is structured in manner to explore its impact on the development of human subjectivity.
The jury also awards a special mention to Renato Leotta presented by galleries Fonti, Napoli and Madragoa, Lisbon for the reflective and sophisticated forms through which the artist observes elements of reality, configuring them poetically and politically in implicit ways.
A further mention goes to the artistic duo, Body by Body, in the booth of gallery Château Shatto, for their approach to artistic research through a mode of collaborative networking and a variety of media expressly focused on manifestations of activism and of the grotesque”.
In 2016, Present Future presents projects by 20 artists represented by 18 foreign and 4 Italian galleries, and selected by a curatorial committee composed of its coordinator Luigi Fassi (visual arts curator, steirischer herbst festival, Graz), Anne Faucheret (Curator, Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna), Hicham Khalidi (Associate Curator, Fondation d’entreprise Galeries Lafayette, Lafayette Anticipation, Paris), Sohrab Mohebbi (writer and associate curator, REDCAT, Los Angeles) and Wim Waelput (founding director and curator, KIOSK, Ghent).
Since 2012 the prize, organised in collaboration with Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, has offered the winner the exceptional opportunity of presenting a solo exhibition at the museum.
In 2015 the prize was awarded to Alina Chaiderov, represented by Gallery Antoine Levi, Paris, with her works Before 1989 we kept the bananas in the closet (2014) and Spaces within (separated from the outside air by layer upon layer of protection (2014). A solo show by the artist will open at the Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea at the same time as Artissima 2016.
Thanks to illycaffè’s receptiveness and the active collaboration with Castello di Rivoli, the illy Present Future Prize gives significant support to emerging artists, and confirms the innovative role of the museum as an artistic institution of international repute.
Over the years, the prize has highlighted the work of Tobias Putrih, Hans Op De Beeck, Gardar Eide Einarsson, Marc Bijl, Hans Schabus, Phil Collins, Jeremy Deller, Dora Garcia, Tue Greenfort, David Maljkovic, Ryan Trecartin, Melanie Gilligan and Rachel Rose. Furthermore, each year the project gives rise to a vital trinity: the artists and the galleries that participate; the curators who make the research, selections and invitations; and the museum directors, collectors and professionals in the art world who form the jury that awards the annual prize.
