Ars Viva Prize
2018

Since 1953 the Kulturkreis der deutschen Wirtschaft im BDI e.V. has been awarding the annual ARS VIVA prize to young artists living in Germany whose works are distinguished by their pioneering potential. In the 2018 the prize was given to three artists: Anna-Sophie Berger Oscar Enberg and Zac Langdon-Pole.

The jury was chaired by Ulrich Sauerwein and consisted of members of the Kulturkreis Fine Arts Committee, and directors and curators Chris Fitzpatrick (Kunstverein München), Martin Germann (S.M.A.K., Ghent), Zita Cobb (Fogo Island Arts / Shorefast Foundation), Nicolaus Schafhausen (Kunsthalle Wien / Shorefast Foundation), and Krist Gruijthuijsen (KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin) as expert advisors.

The prize includes two exhibitions at renowned art institutions in Germany and Belgium, the ars viva catalogue, and an artist residency on Fogo Island (Canada).

While the artistic strategies and areas of investigation of Anna-Sophie Berger, Oscar Enberg, and Zac Langdon-Pole are very distinct, all of them develop their projects through in-depth research into the social, historical, and economic dimensions of objects and environments. Each artist makes visible and combines differing modes of production, distribution, and value-attribution. In the ARS VIVA 2018 exhibition, logics of displacement, hybridization, and semantic ambiguity are featured front and center.