Maria Nordin Beckers Art Award 2011

Scholarship exhibition
Main hall, Färgfabriken

Curator Fia Palmgren

Beckers Artist Award of 150,000 Swedish kronor, awarded for the 25th time, goes to Maria Nordin. Born in Linköping in 1980, Nordin graduated in 2010 from the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm.

Jury Statement

For Maria Nordin, paper and watercolour have become the primary materials. She is at home in the odourless water, in the fluid wet, and in distinctly applied tones. With her work she takes casual aim at capturing figures in motion, in large format or in animation, often seeking out complicated poses that challenge the brush, the hand, and the mind. The result is pictures and films of our time, playful and spontaneous, but also disturbing and complex: strained groupings of bodies that seem cast out into an empty nothingness without context. In her recent work, Nordin has focused primarily on the human face with its gazes and subtle shifts. Her extremely intimate depictions of rosy skin and the human psyche are pregnant with new opportunities on new paper in, a working process that is both embracing and probing. This is work that in its fragility awaits an answer, work filled with retakes and destruction, beyond empty equilibrism.

Maria Nordin is awarded the 2011 Beckers Artist Award of 150,000 Swedish kronor for the manner in which she bravely and captivatingly challenges the ease of her artistic gift.

On behalf of the jury/Mårten Castenfors

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