Bonniers Konsthall

“Jessica Faiss receives the award for her focused, consistent and long-term work with moods and motifs, and for her exceptional ability to bring out painterly qualities in the medium of video. The power source of Jessica Faiss’ work is a conspicuous eventlessness, which is highly unusual and capturing. She invites us on a journey with no apparent destination, and the simultaneously stagnant and changeable character of her films creates a hypnotic effect. Here, there is a movement between exterior action and interior processes that evokes a statement of contemplation. Her films create mental spaces with a tempo and a time that present an alternative to the state of affairs. Her works are places with a deeper and more quieting breathing.”

“Mathias Kristersson receives the award for his subtle and visually poetic tussle with language and for his inquiring and impressively wide range of artistic expressions. Through the means of radical transitions between modes of expression, Mathias Kristersson addresses issues of language and communication. Employing sculpture, sound, installation, performance, text and video, he turns the meaning of words inside out. He is particularly interested in the narrative structures and import that arise outside the boundaries of language. Frequently recurring in his works is the gap between statement and interpretation, as well as the materiality of words. In several of his works, language appears in a highly concrete form.”

“EvaMarie Lindahl receives the award for her exceptionally elaborate draughtsmanship that creates an exuberant and teeming imagery where present and past meet. Depicting tableaux where the past is powerfully present, EvaMarie Lindahl’s works are executed with remarkable precision. The drawings form series in which history is reformulated according to the artist’s singular desire to bridge the gap between then and now. Her point of departure is often existent images, which are given new meaning and a new life through a process of ‘redrawing’. Lindahl’s sampling also comprises the language of power, and her images of vermin echo the metaphors of the rhetoric of genocide, which provides her drawings with a Cimmerian quality.”

The Grant Committee’s statement is by Niclas Östlind, jury member and Senior Curator.