Fashion.at

13 October 2024

Thomas Feuerstein's artwork, driven by scientific themes from biology, nature's metabolism, and AI, won him the 2024 Dagmar Chobot Prize

Fashion.at attended this week's award ceremony of the Dagmar Chobot Prize by the founder of the eponymous Viennese gallery. The event took place on the evening of October 10th at the Leopold Museum. When Fashion.at accepted the invitation about two weeks before the event, the expectations for an interesting decision for an artist were not very high, but on this evening it should turn out that surprises are possible even in a rather established framework.

Though Dagmar Chobot, the grande dame of art, especially sculpture in recent years, and one of the pillars of the Austrian cultural scene, pointed out in her speech that the nominated artists could not compete with the country's star of sculptural art, Erwin Wurm, because, as she said, he plays in a league of his own, Fashion.at came to a different conclusion after learning more about the work of this year's Dagmar Chobot Prize winner, Thomas Feuerstein. A few years ago, the art specialist Chobot donated the 'Chobot Collection' to the Albertina, which is currently showing the retrospective 'Erwin Wurm' on the occasion of the artist's 70th birthday. It seemed a bit like a cleverly provocatively positioned statement to unleash a subtle wave of surprise that rolled through the room and gave content to the small talk among the guests after the ceremony.

Feuerstein's work isn't a concurrence, it's a substantially different contemporary approach to art, reflecting nature and digital computer science in a kind of parodic way with a subtle sense of humor. The themes of the Metabolica series, such as the artwork 'Fatty Fantasy', on view at thomasfeuerstein.net, which consists of a large puppet lying lazily next to a brewing-like vessel containing green algae that produce fatty acids, seemed more relevant than ever - especially on a day when the media covered extensively the research of the 2024 Nobel Laureates in Chemistry and possible solutions for the future, such as the decomposition of plastic. (Read more about the winners at nobelprize.org.)

The jury of the €10,000 Dagmar Chobot Sculpture Prize recognized Feuerstein's innovative approach to sculpture that integrates interdisciplinary theories and hybrid media. His work challenges traditional concepts of sculpture by exploring different states of aggregation and their temporal and transformative aspects. Feuerstein has been praised for merging artistic expression with scientific concepts, effectively creating narratives that resonate with contemporary cultural phenomena. His projects, such as the collaborative use of algae and bacteria in installations like 'Metabolica', blur the boundaries between nature and culture.

Feuerstein was one of a total of six nominees, including Kris Lemsalu, whose sculpture 'Chará' - a symbol against violence against women - on the Graben in Vienna caused a stir in 2023, and Sophie Hirsch; the latter was inspired for her sculptures by the physical training developed by Joseph Pilates. The Dagmar Chobot Sculpture Prize, established in 2016 in honor of the founder's 70th birthday, is awarded every two years to a contemporary sculptor in Austria and celebrates both classical and experimental sculptural practices. The award's partner is Bildrecht, the Austrian Society for the Enforcement of Visual Rights. The organization manages the rights of approximately 8,500 visual artists in Austria, such as licensing and protecting artists' works and ensuring that creators receive fair compensation for the use of their images. This includes the administration of reproduction rights, public display rights and other related intellectual property rights. Images of the winning and nominated works, along with additional information, are published at https://www.bildrecht.at/.

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