Max Mara Art Prize for Women
ANDREA BÜTTNER: THE POVERTY OF RICHES
The winner of the third edition (2009-2011) of the Max Mara Art Prize for Women in collaboration with the Whitechapel Gallery was announced at the Londons’ Whitechapel Gallery on 23 March 2010.
The judging panel, of which Iwona Blazwick is Chairwoman, included artist Fiona Banner, gallerist Alison Jacques, art collector Valeria Napoleone and art critic Polly Staple; they selected the shortlisted artists (Becky Beasley, Andrea Büttner e Elizabeth Price) and, after having considered their proposals, announced Andrea Büttner as winner of the Prize. The artist has been realizing her project during a 6-months residency in Italy at the American Academy in Rome, the Pistoletto Foundation in Biella in 2010 and in a few religious communities in Italy.
THE WINNER
Andrea Büttner
Born in Stuttgart in 1972. Lives and works in London and Frankfurt.
After her studies in History and Philosophy at the Berlin’s Humboldt University, she achieves a PhD at the Royal College in London in 2009. She already received many recognitions: Maria-Sibylla-Merian Prize and Kunststiftung Baden-Württemberg Grant (2009), Cusanuswerk Scholarship (2005-8), Working Grant, Tyler Graphics (2006).
She works in a variety of media (such as woodcuts and pressed flowers) and is especially interested in the area where art and religion overlap.
For 2 years the artist spent time with a group of Carmelite nuns in a convent in West London, making pencil sketches of the nuns at prayer. Büttner gave one of the sisters a handheld camera and asked her to record the making of their small hand-crafted offerings, ranging from crochet baskets to religious icons. The resulting video Little Works (2007) presents a wistful image of a creative process untouched by the secular age.
Büttner’s work also investigates the potential dilemmas facing the artist in the expectant space of the gallery. In her 16mm film titled I feel shame / we feel shame / I feel shame (2008), composed of three simultaneous projections, the artist draws attention to the symbolic location of the art gallery and the pressures on the artist that this entails.
THE AWARDED ARTWORK
The project The Poverty of Riches explores the area between religion, art and the position of the artist in the art world. She engages with Catholicism in a complex multi-layered way to think about art. The artworks she produced have been inspired by the Italian religious communities she lived with for a while, by Giotto’s frescoes, and works from the Maramotti Collection.
In her exhibition she transforms the exhibition space into a contemplative space, in which works depicting objects of religious iconography, made in the traditional technique of woodcuts, are on exhibit. Alongside this traditional imagery, everyday textiles from the uniforms of park wardens, policemen and refuse collectors create colourful ‘paintings’ when stretched like canvases. These paintings form part of her exploration of the symbolic use of fabric in Italian religious art.
PRESENTATION OF THE ARTWORK
Whitechapel Gallery, London
1-10 April 2011
Maramotti Collection
Private view 12 November 2011 h. 6.00 pm, in the presence of the artist, Iwona Blazwick, director of Whitechapel Gallery, and Bina von Stauffenberg, curator. A conversation between Andrea Büttner and Lars Bang Larsen, art historian and curator, will follow
In exhibition from 13 November 2011 to 29 April 2012
Andrea Büttner
Vogelpredigt, 2010
Her latest shows
2011
The Poverty of Riches, Whitechapel Gallery, London
Artpace, San Antonio
2010
29th São Paulo Bienal
Love Boat, Kunsthaus Essen, Essen
2009
The young people visiting our ruins see nothing but a style, GAM, Turin
Cabinets #3, SE8, London
2008
Nought to Sixty, ICA, London
Andrea Büttner, Hollybush Gardens, London
2007
On the spot #1 – Andrea Büttner, Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe
Pensée Sauvage, Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt
2006
Anxiety of Influence, The New Wight Biennial, UCLA, Los Angeles
Bloomberg New Contemporaries, The Coach Shed, Liverpool
Biennial, Liverpool