Christine Park Gallery is honoured to participate in the third edition of the Art Prize CBM – Premio Carlo Bonatto Minella. Taking place between London, Prague and Turin the prize aims to foster cultural exchange and promote the work of emerging artists. This year the prize received over one thousand applications from forty-six different countries. Christine Park Gallery will present a group exhibition featuring a selection of works by five Art Prize CBM finalists, including the under 30 and over 30 winners, Jian Zhou and Zdeněk Trs. The works have been selected to demonstrate the extraordinary diversity of entrants and high quality of artistic research exhibited.
HENDRIK BRAET
Hendrik Braet (1974) is a Belgian documentary-based photographer, whose work focuses on his surrounding culture. Endeavouring to catch and embrace reality, Braet never composes his images. The spectacle the artist discovers on the streets of Flanders defies all imagination: an organic hodgepodge grown from a wide range of different styles and periods. Braet calls this ubiquitous style ‘Flemish Eclecticism’. Among the Flemish people Braet identifies a desire to carefully define their territory and to create order and symmetry. As a reaction Braet seeks out hilarious and odd situations, a colourful oasis among the grey landscape of his country.
Braet received a degree in Political Science from the University of Ghent and a degree in Photography from the Academy of Fine Arts Ghent. He recently received honourable mentions for 'Flemish Eclecticism' and 'Interventions of Charlotte’ at the International Photo Award (IPA) and the Moscow Foto Award.
GIACOMO MONTANELLI
Giacomo Montanelli, born in Pisa (1996), is a young, emerging artist producing small-scale works in a variety of mediums. His work oscillates between landscape, portraiture and abstraction, experimenting with different perspectives and layers of comprehension. Montanelli utilises different mediums, techniques and capabilities in a perennial search for new artistic languages and in an attempt to discover his own artistic identity.
After discovering his confidence and familiarity with the brush at an early age Montanelli has continued to seek out opportunities to develop his artistic abilities. In 2011 he founded, together with six other artists, Virginart: a small artistic circle aiming at enhancing its member’s knowledge through experimentation, learning and research. He is also currently enrolled at Virgilio Higher Education Institute.
The artist lives and works in Florence.
LORENZO PINGITORE
Lorenzo Pingitore (1985) is a Turin-based landscape photographer whose work explores notions of time, memory and space. Through eschewing photographic manipulation Pingitore aims to directly recreate his experience of each space, thereby translating his own emotions and thoughts to the viewer. In his most recent series of work Pingitore captures interior spaces that are both dislocated from the exterior and yet highly suggestive of it. These spaces lock memories, hopes, moments and lives within a sort of limbo; an endless sensation that remains incomplete. The artist utilises this captured reality to draw attention to the fact that we are spectators of a story that does not end with our life span, but continues to move on within a time suspended and lost within itself.
Pingitore attended the Istituzionale Scuola D’Arte. ‘Felice Faccio’, in Castellamonte, Turin before studying architecture at the Politecnico di Turin.
ZDENĚK TRS
Zdeněk Trs (1985) is a Czech painter who produces abstract, minimalist work inspired by nature. Trs is known for his extremely sensitive handling of composition and contemplative content. His work explores the relationships and patterns of nature at a micro and macroscopic scale. Although abstract in appearance his work is firmly based in reality, utilising the language of geometry to dictate form. For example, in his work QED the relation between the circle and the square is calculated from the proportions of the Great Pyramid of Giza. Trs is also interested in animal skeletons and often utilises these forms in his work.
Trs graduated from the School of Traditional Painting Techniques at the Academy of Fine Arts, Prague in 2010. His works are included in the collection of the National Gallery in Prague and in private collections in the Czech Republic and abroad.
The artist lives and works in Prague.
JIAN ZHOU
Jian Zhou, born in Hunan, China (1987), is a printmaker whose work combines the traditional mediums of drawing and woodcut. Zhou’s works engage with his own complex emotions and translate them into a musical rhythm devoid of rational thought or layout. Therefore, Zhou creates a stage, or environment, in which the viewer in encouraged to observe and feel the power of his work without needing to wholly comprehend the artist’s initial intention.
Zhou has a BA from China Academy of Art, an MA in Printmaking from Camberwell College of Arts, London, and an MA in Printmaking from the Royal College of Art, London. He is also the founder of Carpe Diem Arts & Studio.
The artist lives and works in London and Bangkok.