2006 blueOrange prize-winner, Gabriel Orozco, selects Emmanuel Van der Meulen for the up-and-coming artist award of the blueOrange
Gabriel Orozco, selected past February as the winner of the blueOrange 2006, has chosen the French painter Emmanuel Van der Meulen as the emerging artist of the blueOrange 2006. As established in the concept of the renown art prize of the German Cooperative Banks – Deutsche Volksbanken und Raiffeisenbanken – the blueOrange prize-winner gives Euro 7.000 of the total prize-money of Euro 77.000 to a young artist just starting his career.
Emmanuel Van der Meulen, born in Paris in 1972, uses the fundamental elements of painting brush, canvas and acrylic paints to pursue the individual experience of the observer. He is not concerned with innovations, virtuosity or spectacular effects. Instead, he focuses on the subtle properties of color, texture and geometric form and on the mystery of perception. The abstraction of his work is calm, almost neutral, and yet conveys the sense that his paintings conceal more than they reveal.
Gabriel Orozco first met the artist, when the latter joint his class at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1998 and 1999. Since accidentally meeting again in 2002, Orozco has followed Van der Meulens work regularly and invited him to collaborate on his Samouraï Tree Series for the Venice Biennial 2005.
blueOrange exhibition and award ceremony in November
The blueOrange, Germanys highest-paying art-prize, is endowed with a total prize-money of Euro 77.000 and a solo exhibition of the prize-winner in one of Germanys prominent art institutions.
The exhibition of Gabriel Orozco will be shown in collaboration with Museum Ludwig Cologne. The award ceremony will take place on November 2nd, 2006. The exhibition will be on view at Museum Ludwig from November 3rd, 2006, until January 28th, 2007.
www.blueorange.bvr.de
