The Art Newspaper

Ukrainian collector Pinchuk funds two new art prizes

International artists under 35 will have a chance to win $100,000

By John Varoli | Web only
Published online 9 Dec 09 (News)

Damien Hirst and the winner of the PinchukArtCentre Prize, Artem Volokitin

Ukrainian billionaire, Victor Pinchuk has created a new international contemporary art prize for artists under 35 years old. The Future Generation Art Prize will be held every two years and the winner will receive $100,000. Four artists who have works in Pinchuk's collection—Andreas Gursky, Damien Hirst, Jeff Koons and Takashi Murakami—will serve as mentors to the prize-winners.

The Prize's board includes American collector Eli Broad, MoMA director, Glenn Lowry, Tate director Sir Nicholas Serota, and Guggenheim Museum director Richard Armstrong.

Meanwhile in Kiev, on 4 December the PinchukArtCentre held a ceremony for its first bi-annual prize for under 35 Ukrainian artists. The top prize of 100,000 hryvnya (about $12,500) went to Artem Volokitin for the life-size portraits from his Teenagers and Hero series.

Two special prizes of 25,000 hryvnya ($3,125) each were awarded to Oleksiy Salmanov for his China—Eclipse photographs showing a Chinese man passing in front of a European man and eventually blocking him out; and to Masha Shubina for her narcissistic installation, My Religion, which features a large, wall-mounted cross covered by a number of self-portraits.

Members of the international jury included Udo Kittelmann, director of the national galleries in Berlin; Jessica Morgan, a curator at Tate Modern in London; and Ukrainian artists Serhiy Bratkov and Boris Mikhailov.

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