Since 1999, the Baloise Group has been honouring two young artists per year with the Art Prize. The prize of CHF 30’000 is awarded by an international jury of renowned experts. In addition, the Baloise Group acquires a group of works by the award winners and donates them to two important European museums.
From left: Mathieu Kleyebe Abonnenc, gallerist Isabelle Alfonsi, curator Anna Goetz, Group CEO Gert De Winter and Chairman Andreas Burckhardt
The Baloise Art Prize 2015 has been awarded to the British artist Beatrice Gibson and Mathieu Kleyebe Abonnenc from France. The work by Beatrice Gibson has been presented to MUDAM, Luxembourg a couple of months ago.Mathieu Kleyebe Abonnenc - Winner of 2015
Last year’s jury includes: Marie-Noëlle Farcy, Curator/Head of Collection, MUDAM, Luxembourg; Susanne Gaensheimer, Director MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt a.M.; Joanna Mytkowska, Director Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw; Professor Wilhelm Schürmann, Herzogenrath and Martin Schwander, Fine Art Advisor of Baloise, Chairman of the jury.
To develop his multifaceted œuvre of film, photography, drawings and sculpture, Mathieu Kleyebe Abonnenc (b. in 1977, lives and works in Rome) takes as his point of departure extensive research on artefacts of colonial and post-colonial history, that are in the context of biographical research into ethnographical objects collected by his grandfather Emile Abonnenc. They serve him as representatives of complex global interrelations and the impact of the latter on the construction of cultural identity. The film Sector IX B (2015), which was presented from Baloise Group to the museum, forms the core of his presentation at the MMK. It tells the fictive story of an ethnologist who in the course of her research begins to question the fundamental conditions of her discipline.
The exhibition Mefloquine Dreams by Mathieu Kleyebe Abonnenc at MMK 1 will run until 8 January 2017.