On the recommendation of the Federal Art Commission, the Federal Office of Culture is this year presenting the Swiss Grand Award for Art/Prix Meret Oppenheim to Felix Lehner, Pamela Rosenkranz and Miroslav Šik. The award ceremony will take place on 16 June, the day of the opening of the Swiss Art Awards exhibition in Basel and will be attended by Federal Councillor Elisabeth Baume-Schneider.
Felix Lehner (b.1960, St. Gallen) opened his first foundry at the age of 22. In 1994, it relocated to the halls of the former dyeing factory in Sittertal. Today, the Kunstgiesserei St. Gallen employs over 80 specialists in a wide range of creative professions. Since it was established, the foundry has become a cornerstone of the Swiss art scene, collaborating with internationally-renowned artists, and with museums and galleries all over the world.
Lehner has employed passion and dedication to turn the Kunstgiesserei into a production site and material research location. It is a place where expertise is cultivated and customised technical processes are developed, from the most high tech to the most artisanal, with and for artists. For over 40 years, Felix Lehner and his teams have been supporting artists at every stage of the creative process. In 2006, Lehner co-founded the Sitterwerk Foundation, a public centre dedicated to art and artistic production, comprising a reference library, a materials archive, and workshops with accommodation for visiting artists. A branch of the foundry employing 15 people was set up in Shanghai in 2012.
Pamela Rosenkranz (b.1979, Altdorf) is a graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Bern and studied at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam from 2010 to 2012. Her multidisciplinary work mainly comprises installation art, sculpture, ready-made and painting. Her unique artistic œuvre, which is conceptually authentic and innovative, has an international reach. She is known for using synthetic materials to produce an idealised nature. Pamela Rosenkranz’s work represents a highly unique contribution to contemporary art, reflecting recent, radically transformative shifts in the philosophical and scientific understanding of humanity and nature.
In 2015, Pamela Rosenkranz represented Switzerland at the 56th Venice Biennale with a multisensory installation entitled Our Product. A viscous liquid, pink in colour and scented, permeated the Swiss Pavilion. In 2023, she revealed an important public sculpture, Old Tree – a bright red and pink form that resembles the branching systems of human organs – at New York’s High Line. Pamela Rosenkranz’s work has been presented at institutions including the Centre d'art contemporain, Geneva (2010), the Basel Kunsthalle (2012), the Swiss Pavilion at the Venice Biennale (2015), K21 Düsseldorf (2017) and the Kunsthaus Bregenz (2021). Her works also feature in the collections of the Centre Georges Pompidou and of the MoMa in New York. In May 2025, a monographic exhibition will be dedicated to her at the Stedelijk Museum (the Netherlands).
|
Anna Melnykova, "Palace of Labor (palats praci), architector I. Pretro, 1916", shot with analog Canon camera, 35 mm Fuji film in March 2022.
ArtDependence Magazine is an international magazine covering all spheres of contemporary art, as well as modern and classical art.
ArtDependence features the latest art news, highlighting interviews with today’s most influential artists, galleries, curators, collectors, fair directors and individuals at the axis of the arts.
The magazine also covers series of articles and reviews on critical art events, new publications and other foremost happenings in the art world.
If you would like to submit events or editorial content to ArtDependence Magazine, please feel free to reach the magazine via the contact page.
