Anna Camner Beckers Art Award 30 years

28 January 2017 12 March 2017

Scholarship exhibition
Main hall, Färgfabriken

2017 is the 30-year anniversary of the Beckers Art Award. This will be presented in a commemorative exhibition where all former winners of the award will participate alongside with this year’s winner, Anna Camner. 

Anna Camner hyper realistic oil paintings seek to investigate the fine line between living and dead matter, light and dark, and the piece’s small size creates an intimacy between beholder and painting. The later works dark background gives the motifs a strong focus and a minimalistic character. The mystical shapes questions what it is we’re viewing and invites us to a peculiar but magical world.

About the artist

Anna Camner graduated from The Royal Academy of Arts in Stockholm 2003 and have since then been exhibited in galleries located in both Stockholm, New York and London. She has also recently participated in the first biennale for contemporary art in Cartagena, Colombia (2014). Many of her works are included in big public collections in Sweden such as Wanås Art and The National art council, she also has works in well-known private collections in Europe and The United States.

Jury statement

Sharpness and obsession is the words that come to mind standing in front of Anna Camners small and precise paintings. Note how these paintings are busy with another time and other places, another world where the hyper realism exposes the seldom seen and elevated.

Camner exhibits an undeniable low-key and cocky attitude in a dangerous genre on the border between sweet and salt: Blessed Hieronymus Bosch – here I come, Anna, anno 2017 an artist whose paintings balances on a knife edge, strengthened by being on its own expedition beyond. I look boldly into our underground, in our fears. Animalistic and weightless. Death and decay. Fantasy and fiction. Crystalline draping and surprises. The focus of things, their own history, protracted and cryptic, but always marked with meaning and with the slowness and accuracy as a virtue. Painting is a defense, a strong point, in an increasingly chaotic world.

In Färgfabrikens beautiful hall, Anna Camners paintings is centered around its own axis. They form a picturesque kingdom among other jubilee grant holder’s visual voices – together they all display a cut in their own time and in our time. And this year’s protagonist, Anna Camner, is awarded Becker’s art award 2017 for that she has an equally rare as unique consequence of a craft that takes brace in the exquisite but carrying poison in its resonance.

Former award winners

Exhibition catalogue

Related

Beckers Art Award was established in 1987 and has since then proven to have a remarkable ability to identify young talents on the brink of a breakthrough in their careers. The winner is awarded a grant, which from this year has been raised from 150,000 to 200,000 SEK, and a solo exhibition that has, since 2001, been arranged and held in collaboration with Färgfabriken.

Jury: Jenny Lindén Urnes, Mårten Castenfors och Magnus Jensner

Key partners