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Ryan Trecartin wins Wolgin Prize
By roberta
October 22, 2009 · 25 Comments
Ryan Trecartin, maker of weirdly wonderful videos that disturb by channeling today’s culture and parodying it back, won the first $150,000 Wolgin Prize for art tonight at a ceremony at Temple University’s Tyler School of Art.
Ryan Trecartin, happy, after being awarded the Wolgin Prize
After thanking Jack Wolgin, founder of the prize, Trecartin thanked his long-time collaborator who he called his best friend, Lizzie Fitch, who was in the audience. He thanked all his collaborators. ”I should give them some of this,” he said. He thanked his gallerist, Elizabeth Dee, and also thanked his mom and aunt who were there as well as his dad who wasn’t. ”This is going to change my practice,” he said.
Earlier I had spoken with Fitch who said she had just returned from Paris where they had shown their collaborative sculptures at the Paris art fair FIAC.
This is the Wolgin Prize’s first year in existence. Philadelphia real estate developer Wolgin, a big supporter of the arts throughout his career, donated $3.2 million for the annual international art prize, with Tyler School of Art administering the prize and exhibition. We at artblog hope they can find some women artists to be finalists next year.
NEW! The Wolgin exhibition of the three finalists’ work has been extended to Nov. 14.
Tags: Ryan Trecartin, wolgin prize
Readers Comments (25)
I’m delighted it’s Trecartin! And I also want to say we at artblog were also puzzled by the all-American trio of finalists. Next year women and surely someone international.
Feh. I’m sure Ryan’s a great guy, and has lots of potential, but the artworld has been way too enamored of him to get over the feeling he gives them that they’ve discovered the voice of a new generation. It makes it easy for curators and museums (the ethically flailing new Museum for example) to think that they’re hip to what sub-Jesus-age folks are doing. Biggers and Rakowitz are both more critical and nuanced. Trecartin might really evolve into something in 5 or 10 years, but this choice is a mistake.
And really…no women? WTF, Temple?
I agree, there should be a woman nominated, but ONLY IF IT’S DESERVED!!!!!
As far as gender, that’s certainly true, but to keep it local the first year is a nice gesture, I think. I’m not enamored of Trecartin either, but his work is moving in a very interesting direction. And this prize is as much about encouragement as it is rewarding, so I think it’s appropriate.
Ryan was easily the most engaging of the bunch. An obvious choice, in my mind. The work speaks for itself. As for no women, there isn’t always going to be demographic balance to this type of selection process. Before there becomes a charge of sexual bias, lets give them a few years.
Re: Criticism of Trecartin
I imagine a similar criticism could be made of any large monetary-prize recipient. These awards tend to be fairly symbolic and arbitrary in my mind, and rarely a bad idea. Trecartin is doing something unique and working hard, why should anyone be upset he was rewarded for it?
Also, if there are other artists more “worthy” of this money, will they really be that worse off for not receiving it? Or would they (or their art) be that much better off for having received it? Trecartin himself said this money would “change his practice” – though I may be reading that incorrectly-we’ll see if it’s for the better. I always found the medium-fi technical quality of his videos to be one of the more appealing aspects.
I did think Ryan was the choice. And from the talking last night it seemed that the words “future” and “students” kept coming up again and again and that the prize was as much about voting for the future of art and teaching moments for the students as anything else. The issue of gender is a no brainer. There are deserving women artists out there…some favorites are Shirin Neshat, Kara Walker, Phoebe Washburn, Sophie Calle, Rachel Whiteread, Marlene Dumas….many more. They would all provide great teaching moments and art that looks to the future.
I was not clear what Trecartin meant when he said the prize would change his practice…and I didn’t get to ask him. But one of the hosts of the event, Temple President Weaver I believe, mentioned that things were in flux for Trecartin. Apparently, he likes to move around, and we may not have him in Philadelphia forever… So perhaps the prize will allow him change his physical location in the universe….or maybe he was talking about the tech aspects. If you see the show, you’ll see that his video is played on a huge video screen. It must be HD and the jumbly, split/screen, cyber-layered imagery works just fine on a bigger, slicker, more tech savvy monitor….so he’s already jumped to some level of low-med-high tech melange for presentation.
Ryan congratulations and good on you, its wonderful news wish all success
Congratulations Ryan!
To me this is a call to action like the Obama Nobel Peace Prize. I think both are justified.
Cheers,
Bobby
Many congratulations to Ryan!!
Thank you Roberta for mentioning the gender imbalance. It was kind of disappointing as the Wolgin’s inaugural award.
$150,000 seems to be an almost absurd amount of money for any individual artist, emerging or not. Seems to me, the prize would better serve its stated purpose as three $50,000 awards? Thats more than any emerging artist I know makes a year, and plenty to fund new projects. Seems like this is at least a little bit about being the “World’s Largest Juried Individual Fine Art Prize”.
Its great and all, but if their priorities are promoting the future of art, when not promote more of the future than less?
It does seem a little like winning the lottery, that big huge purse of dough. And yes, it’s as much (or more) about the institution and the prize as it is about the artist who receives the prize. The Pew fellowships are $60,000 split over two years (up from $50,000). That seems a compromise amount that will pay some bills and give some wiggle room to an artist’s tight budget for two years. I’ve talked with many Pew fellows who are thrilled to have the award but say in the next breath that it doesn’t “make” your career and that shortly after the honeymoon it’s back to the grind of work and life. At least the Wolgin prize has the possibility of going beyond paying the bills. It might open up creative options not envisioned by the artist under normal circumstances. Trecartin said it would change his practice. I guess we’ll have to see what that means.
I also missed the fact that Trecartin also won the Pew…I suppose it’s not accepted to take such things into account, but maybe these organizations should spread the wealth around a bit..
Or split the the award so that the other two finalists receive some part of the lump sum. All of the finalists spent a lot of time meeting with students. and at panel discussions/other related functions. One would hope they were given some sort of stipend for travel expenses and for the work in the exhibition. Its seems pretty awful if this were an “all or nothing” experience.
From a reliable source, the other two artists were not that concerned with the amount of money that they didn’t receive. To them, it just isn’t that much money.
Congrats Ryan! You deserve it. I cannot wait to see what you produce next!
WOW! ciao bella Ryan! I expect the biggest surprises from YOU!! your fan, laddster
“From a reliable source, the other two artists were not that concerned with the amount of money that they didn’t receive. To them, it just isn’t that much money.”
Just isn’t that much money? Geeze…a whole ‘nuther issue with nominating award recipients. Maybe there should be a rule that rich artists are banned from being nominated for such “gifts”.
Do prizes reflect the merit of the artist or something else (politics eg)? Hmmmm, let’s see. Prizes are not awarded by democratic vote of the people, and the prize money is given by a donor who has ideas about what he wants. The whole system is fraught with inequities, intrigue and effluvia. But that doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be prizes and that some of them, like this one, shouldn’t give out huge gobs of money.
Needs-based prize giving seems like something that works in the realm of students, teachers and academic institutions. Many scholarships are needs-based prizes.
But I can’t see them working in a competition that’s for professional artists.
Regarding needs based prizes, I completely agree. I dropped in those tid bits to illustrate how our ‘philly’ perspective is clouding our macro view of the Wolgin and to that ‘emerging’ in this case refers to artists emerging to the museum collection level. A far different ‘emerging’ than we have in Philly. Maybe now Philly can start thinking about thinking about how we promote and support our homegrown artists?
Certainly…that all makes sense. I suppose I’m just taking issue with the concept of gargantuan monetary prizes for artists. Seems odd to me.
I love gargantuan monetary prizes for artists–there should be more of them!
Artists are underpaid for their work. Period. So if someone wants to pay them an “unreasonable” sum compared to the market, it’s a good thing. But it’s not really unreasonable if you look at how much work preceeded, and how much bankers are taking home for breaking the economy. This is not gargantuan if you compare it to the lottery, either. It’s chump change.
Good point(s). I’m on board.
This guy is an absolute genius. He deserves millions of dollars. I hope he takes over the world.