Since 2016, the PLAYGROUND exhibition series has offered young artists the ideal opportunity to present their work to a wide audience and make their first contacts in the art world. In 2024, for the sixth time, GALERIE VON&VON is inviting students from academies and art colleges across Germany to apply for the PLAYGROUND ART PRIZE. We were able to win over an independent jury for this award.
Jury 2024:
- Katia Baudin (Direktorin Museen Krefeld)
- Amely Deiss (Direktorin Kunstpalais Erlangen)
- Katia Hermann (freie Kuratorin Berlin)
- Dr. Harriet Zilch (Direktorin Kunsthalle Nürnberg)
Platz 1: Aerin Hong / Städelschule
Influenced by the history of labour migration during the period of modern economic growth in Korea, as well as by her own biography, birth in Germany and youth in Seoul, she develops a special interest in cultural diffusion that influences history and shapes the present in which we live. Aerin Hong's work explores the psychology of compulsion and its manifestations across time and cultures. As a representative phenomenon of the collective mind, she is interested in the affinity and heterogeneity between popular cultures worldwide. The variations in themes such as furniture, computer games, dolls and the associated sensibility of the crowd are the main material of her work. Often her work takes on the fixed façade of what is commonly understood as beauty, femininity, discipline and drama, only to challenge the conventional understanding of authenticity in cultural symbols.
Platz 2: Vanessa Amoah Opoku / Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst Leipzig
As an interdisciplinary artist, Vanessa Amoah Opoku explores the complexity and fragility of experiences that take place in the interstices of cultures. Her work reflects the challenges and opportunities that arise from her diasporic position, tracing the paths of communication and failure, the imperfection of landscapes and the transience of space. The use of pointcloud scans plays a crucial role in her artistic practice. This technique allows her to critically scrutinise the gesture of collecting and transform the physical world into a digital one. However, these scans are inherently fragile as they only offer an incomplete representation of reality. This draws a strong parallel to the multifaceted perception of people and their surroundings. However, the fragility and incompleteness also open up possibilities.
Platz 3: Rebecca Rothenborg / Städelschule
For Rebecca Rothenborg, art is one of the few things that has no obvious purpose or function. The fact that it has no defined purpose or role to play makes it the freest form of engagement and experience. For her, it is a kind of resistance to conformity and the rigid structures of society and capitalism. She creates garments from common materials, such as cleaning rags or coffee filters, as well as furniture that refuses to be used as intended. Her sculptures, which are made from everything from wood and steel to kitchen towels and broomsticks, encourage us to imagine what impossible actions would be required to use, wear or interact with these objects.