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The award exhibition presents works of art drawn from different aesthetics and artistic philosophies. The only common feature linking the authors is their more or less formal relation with a certain administrative territory—Styria. However, in our globalised artworld, this aspect determines the character of individual artistic expression only to a limited degree. In addition, most of the artists participating in the exhibition—though all were born or studied or lived in Styria once — are now co-creating the artistic scenes of Vienna, Berlin or Brussels. If any territorial identification is important to them, it is not necessarily that of the province of Styria.
Hence, it was not identification with the province or any form of referring to its localness that was the criterion used in selecting artists for the exhibition. The purpose was not to exhibit representative samples of the artistic trends currently dominant on the Styrian stage. In the context of the adopted format of a competition, such approaches would prove highly problematic.The decisive factor in selecting the artists was therefore the value of each individual work, evaluated through the prism of the curator’s personal preferences.
The competition exhibition can thus be seen as a show given by a dream team brought together by the curator, Jarosław Suchan, Director of the Muzeum Sztuki, Łódź. The members of this super group—which could be called ‘The Styrians’—have left their original crews and will for a short while be uniting their forces in order to give an unforgettable concert together. Representativity or typicality of their creation is of no significance here. What counts in the end is the sheer quality of their individual input – what they contribute to this joint venture.
