• 45 masters lead this creative “multitude”
• Voting for the Online Prize is open until October 20th
With 3,526 artworks registered, 372 more compared to last year, registration for the Terna Prize 02 closed on Saturday, October 10th at 8:00 am in Italy and at 11:00 pm Italian time, in New York. The Prize represents a project for promoting contemporary artists and art integrated within a broad agreement with the Minister for Cultural Heritage and Activities.
The Online Prize is now officially open for the 3,529 artists participating in all the categories. There will be time to vote one’s favourite artists until October 20th within 6:00 pm through the large showcase of the website www.premioterna.com. The web is one of the great protagonists of the TP02 as demonstrated by the over 85,000 entries present on research engines such as Google.
The Prize’s first edition has been surpassed in quality and quantity: 45 art masters for the Terawatt category only by invitation, participated in the project expressing their creativity on the theme Energy: Mankind = Future : Environment. A proportion for new aesthetics. The 3,526 artworks registered in this edition are divided as follow: 1,361 Gigawatt Category (under 35), 2,021 Megawatt Category (over 35), 45 Terawatt Category, 102 Connectivity Category that represent the first experience for both Italians and foreigners residing in New York that are artistically connected with the contemporary art world capital.
An exceptional result that highlights the enthusiasm and trust on the part of the artists for a project that as pointed out by one of the curators, Gianluca Marziani, “has exceeded the scope of the prize” to become with everyone’s contribution, “a cultural platform made of ideas, analyses, research, events, exhibits, meetings, special projects, publishing and evolved communication”. “A sensation of great surprise and enthusiasm – commented curator Cristiana Collu – for all the work carried out: such a strong participation of artists reveals the perception of an increasingly high quality that shows that the Prize’s many opportunities were welcomed. Quality and quantity, more participants and higher quality of the artworks. Evidently it was an area where there was a lot to do and ‘listening to the signals’ has lead to exceptional results.”
Upcoming dates: between October 18th and 20th the finalists will be selected; online voting will close on October 20th; on October 22nd the meeting between the Jury and the Gallery Committee will be held to announced the winners.
All the regions of Italy participated enthusiastically. The greatest number of participants, formed totally by 1,435 women and 2,094 men, was from the Lazio region (22% of artists), followed by Lombardy (14%) and Campania (7%). To trace a map of our country’s “contemporary art”, the leaders of artistic expression in the North are represented not only by Lombardy but also by Emilia Romagna that registered a good level of participation (6%), by Piedmont (5%) and by Veneto (4%). In central Italy, in addition to Lazio, there was also a significant participation from Tuscany (7%) and Umbria (2%). In the south, the regions with the highest participation were Sicily and Puglia with 5% of the total participating artists, followed by Sardinia (4%) and Calabria (2%).
In brief, the triple results from this second edition are:
• an increased wish to participate in current cultural, social and aesthetic aspects such as man’s future, the environment and energy that become elements for reflections and creativity for artists of all ages and from all the regions of Italy;
• the masters of Italian contemporary art have demonstrated their faith in the Prize and empathy with the theme; they accepted proposing their artworks as guiding lights for one another: a number that has nearly doubled compared to the first edition and that stands to witness this;
• the quality of the participating artworks, the important presence of large formats, of technological and innovative techniques, a greater pertinence to a complex and articulate theme and over 100 videos submitted (visible in the website’s multi-media page).
The number of contemporary art masters participating in the Terawatt category is extraordinary: nearly doubled compared to the first edition with 45 artworks registered revealing a diverse scenario enriched with additional innovative languages. Alongside the most important visual artists of the Italian contemporary art world, the curators have also placed the leading stars of Italian Design, outstanding film researchers, experimenters of Italian research on film and photography as well as young artists with high level international museum exposure.
The Jury is formed by Terna’s Chairman and CEO, Luigi Roth and Flavio Cattaneo, by curators Gianluca Marziani and Cristiana Collu, and by Massimiliano Fuksas, Matthew Higgs, Luigi Ontani, Giuseppe Piccioni, Marco Senaldi, Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Vicente Todolì, and will announce the winners on October 22nd.
The Committee of Gallery Owners, coordinated by the art consultant Francesco Cascino, is composed by the following Galleries: Marina Covi Celli’s Oredaria Arti Contemporanee (Rome), Laura Trisorio’s Studio Trisorio (Naples), Alberto Peola’s Galleria Alberto Peola (Turin), Paolo Curti & AnnaMaria Gambuzzi’s Galleria Curti & Gambuzzi (Milan) and Hélène de Franchis, Studio La Città (Verona).
2009-10-13
