TENT Welcomes MK Award

This year, at the fifth anniversary of the MK Award Foundation, sees the third edition of the MK Award. The three nominees will present new works in TENT Rotterdam. The exhibition also features video portraits of the three artists, produced by Rotterdam film maker Marieke van der Lippe, allowing the audience and the award’s jury an in-depth view in the ways each of the three nominees define their position and ambition as visual artists.

This year’s jury consists of  Reyn van der Lugt (art collector and curator), Gil & Moti (artists,  winners MK Award 2015), Adriana Gonzalez Hulshof (founding director Amsterdam Art Weekend), Berry Koedam (director RAM Gallery and RAM Foundation) and Vincent van Velzen (art historian and  critic a.o. Metropolis M, curator). The jury was unanimous in its selection of the three nominees:

Peter Fengler (1964) surprisingly included in his documentation a custom made video. As the founding father and creative director of De Player, Fengler created a podium for himself that for many years has allowed him to focus on a coherent and personal niche in the arts: performances and sound art. He thus continues in the footsteps of Fluxus, providing that historic with ever new and inspiring turns. In De Player Fengler also introduces ever new generations of artists of various creative disciplines, that just like him offer a mix hi art and lo art, making it appealing to ever new audiences.

Even though the various projects of Saskia Janssen (1967) may sometimes be hardly recognizable as visual art, they are nevertheless recognized as such by the jury. It really appreciates this artist’s great personal involvement with diverse groups at the edges of society, and with the issues and themes that play a role there. Janssen’s identifying with these results into a consistent body of works, that points out problematic issues of these our times, that shows unbounded engagement, and that stretches the definitions of what it might mean to be an artist.

Even though well known for a long time, artist Ad de Jong (1953) once more surprises the jury. Both his autonomous works as well as commissioned projects in 3D are characterized by an attractive, ‘painterly’ visual language, the result of a very specific use of materials and colour, as well as a playful handling of space.
The jury has great respect of the Amsterdam-based artist space W139 of which De Jong is one of the founding fathers; even after all these years it is still of great relevance for contemporary art. The jury also greatly appreciates all other ways by which De Jong promotes the work of younger colleagues.