Frieze Art Fair is delighted to announce that the winner of The Cartier Award 2009 is the American artist Jordan Wolfson. Wolfson is a talented conceptual artist, based in Berlin and New York. His winning proposal was selected from over 450 applications. Once again, entries to the Cartier Award were made by artists from all over the world. For Frieze Art Fair 2009, sponsored for the sixth year by Deutsche Bank, Wolfson will present a new site-specific work.
The Cartier Award is widely acknowledged as one of the world’s leading art awards. It allows an emerging artist from outside the UK to realise a major project at Frieze Art Fair as part of the critically acclaimed Frieze Projects programme. Neville Wakefield, curator of Frieze Projects, commenting on the announcement said: “Jordan’s unique brand of poetic conceptualism ranges across the sciences and humanities to create what are at once delightful and perplexing forays into the narratives and myths that colour our times. Especially exciting is the opportunity to bring such complex and sometimes challenging work to the wider audience of Frieze.”
The Cartier Award forms an exciting and visible element of Cartier’s long-standing commitment to the commissioning and display of contemporary art. Grazia Quaroni, a member of the selection panel, and curator of the Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art in Paris added: “Mixing with total freedom all aspects of contemporary culture for his visual purposes, Wolfson creates a new language while researching new paths to engage the audience.”
In 2009, Gasworks, London’s outstanding complex of artists’ studios, will once again host the award’s residency.
Jordan Wolfson (b. 1980) is an American artist whose recent work focuses on film and video. He lives and works in Berlin and New York and graduated from Rhode Island School of Design in 2003.
Selected solo shows include: 'Untitled false document', Swiss Institute for Contemporary Art, New York (2008); 'Optical Sound', Gamec - Galleria Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Bergamo (2007) and Kunsthalle Zürich (2004). Group shows include: T - Torino Triennale Arte Contemporanea, 50 lune di Saturno, Turin (2008); Gladstone Gallery, Brussels (2008); 'Passengers', CCA Wattis Institute, San Francisco (2008); 'Learn to Read', Tate Modern, London (2007) and 'Day for Night', Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2006).