14th Premio Cairo
The award ceremony for the 14th Premio Cairo, curated by Luca Beatrice, was held on 24 October in Milan.
What is the state of Italian art today? It is a question that the Premio Cairo attempts to answer by searching for new talents destined to feed a collection that boasts important names, confirmed year after year. Having travelled the length and breadth of the Peninsula to seek out those under 40 who, according to the regulations, can participate in the competition, the 14th edition presents first of all an important novelty that will please supporters of equal opportunities: ten men and ten women will participate.
This is perhaps the first time that absolute gender parity has occurred in an award. Another difference, compared to the recent past, is the return to the single work, unpublished and realised for the occasion. As for the themes, the variety of languages and the complexity of expressive registers stand out.
Selected artists
Selected artists: Paola Angelini, Alessandra Baldoni, The Bounty KillArt, Alessandro Brighetti, Silvia Camporesi, Gianluca Capozzi, Linda Carrara, Rita Casdia, Chiara Coccorese, Anna Galtarossa, Alessandro Lupi, Laurina Paperina, Marco Perego, Donato Piccolo, Roberto Pugliese, Laura Pugno, Federico Solmi, Chiara Sorgato, Ettore Tripodi, Nadir Valente.
The Jury
The jury:
Luca Massimo Barbero, Direttore dell'Istituto di Storia dell'Arte della Fondazione Cini di Venezia; Michele Bonuomo, Direttore di Arte e Antiquariato, mensili dell'Editoriale Giorgio Mondadori-Cairo Editore; Claudia Dwek, Presidente di Sotheby’s Italia e Vice Presidente di Sotheby’s Europa; Gianfranco Maraniello, Direttore di MAMbo Museo d'Arte Moderna di Bologna; Marco Pierini, Direttore della Galleria Civica di Modena; Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Presidente Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo di Torino; Giorgio Verzotti, Curatore e Direttore artistico di Artefiera Bologna.
The winner
Laura Pugno won the 14th Premio Cairo with the photographic triptych ‘Proposals of Self’.
Born in 1975 in Trivero (Biella), she lives and works in Turin.
Exhibitions include:
Greater Torino, Rä di Martino and Laura Pugno, Fondazione Sandretto Re Reabudengo, Turin (2012);
Non per caso, studio#5 Cabinet, Milan (2011).
Urbano Cairo, presidente della Cairo Editore e Laura Pugno, vincitrice del 14° Premio Cairo.
Proposte di sé, 2013 : trittico, abrasione su stampa fotografica, cm 88x68 ciascuno Foto Massi Ninni
Triptych, abrasion on photographic print, 88x68 cm each
Award-winning work
Laura Pugno's works arise from a direct relationship with the reality she carefully chooses to reproduce. Initially devoted to painting, in recent years the artist has turned her attention to photography, experimenting with techniques of execution that are not limited to just shooting but evolve into direct interventions on the print with abrasions. Favorite subject is the landscape, captured by means of a perceptual detachment dictated by the decomposition of the image, which offers a vision that is no longer unitary and traditionally romantic. Proposals of Self is composed of three photographs with a single subject, a mountain glimpse. The scrapings exercised on the photographic material make explicit the desire to cancel, time after time, the most recognizable details of this panorama. Houses, huts, small churches and highland streams are in turn erased; in one photograph one detail emerges, in another yet another. The initial view is thus altered altogether and what is presented to the viewer is a vision where the system-landscape perceived in its custom is annihilated in favor of an expressive, formal and executive liberation.
Award citation
The Jury motivated the choice as follows: "An artist of sure talent, she makes herself the interpreter of a contemporary way of understanding painting in relation to photography, inserting in it the memory of passage and time."