The work of Jeroen de Rijke and Willem de Rooij combines painting and cinema. In their 35-mm film, Bantar Gebang, they have created a vessel that illustrates the movement of life and the effect of light. For ten minutes they directed their static camera at a housing development, thereby registering every change between the end of the night and the beginning of the day. The framing is rigorously defined and draws on the tradition of Dutch landscape painting. The dawning light robs the landscape of its enchantment and of its lustrous, velvet tenebrosity as it gradually reveals a shanty town on the outskirts of Jakarta. There people are seen facing the new day amidst garbage cans and tin huts. Resorting neither to transfiguration nor to moral commentary, the artists reported on another part of the world and another way of life. They used the film medium’s inherent quality of time to intensify and clarify perception.

In addition to the cash prize, Baloise acquires a group of works by the award winners and donates them to two important European museums. Bantar Gebang was presented to the collection of the Hamburger Kunsthalle.

Daniel Buchholz Gallery, Cologne

Jury members:
Ingvild Goetz, collector, Munich; Hou Hanru, Independent Curator and Critic, Paris; Christoph Heinrich, Curator of Galerie der Gegenwart, Hamburger Kunsthalle; and Martin Schwander, independent art consultant of Bâloise, chairman of the jury.