OPEN PRIZE
14th Edition
Special Prize to the
71st Venice International Film Festival
The OPEN Prize 2014 is awarded to
Rä di Martino
Award ceremony: Tuesday 2nd September 2014
Villa degli Autori, Venice Lido
Arte Communications launches the 14th edition of the OPEN Prize, on the occasion of OPEN 17. International Exhibition of Sculptures and Installations.
The institution of this award, conceived in 2000 by Paolo De Grandis and Pierre Restany, developed parallel to OPEN, the International Exhibition of Sculptures and Installations, which opens its seventeenth edition this year on 28th August. The prize will be awarded to a director taking part in the Venice International Film Festival whose work reveals, in an unprecedented way, a fruitful interest in the fascinating theme of the mutual interaction between art and cinema, two art forms which live on image and are nourished by the desire to express emotions.
The OPEN 2014 Prize, a work conceived and realised by the Artist Mark Aspinall has been awarded to Rä di Martino.
The jury, chaired by Paolo De Grandis, explained why he was chosen:
«To the works of Rä di Martino, a video artist who skilfully plays with the languages of art. His ironic and surreal gaze captures bizarre stories to tell tales of human fragility, among theatre, music, literature and the cinema. He judiciously articulates codes and quotations, moving expertly between the techniques and tools of the arts.
In particular, the cinema is both protagonist and object of investigation and reflection for Rä di Martino. So in his works we can catch, glimpse, perceive or stumble across stories, places, words, echoes of the cinema that has become a collective memory and thus a kind of alphabet: coded signs that tell new stories or new old stories in the artistic video dimension».
Previous winning directors were Joao Botelho with the film Quem es tu?,Julie Taymor with Frida, Takeshi Kitano with Zatoichi, Marziyeh Meshkini with Sag - haye velgard,Stanley Kwan with Changhen ge (Everlasting Regret), Jia Zhangke with Dong, Peter Greenaway with Nightwatching, Philip Haaswith The Butcher’s Shop,Michael Moore with Capitalism: A Love Story, John Woo, the Director Marco Müller, Robert Redford and Serena Nono.
The OPEN exhibition has been held for seventeen years, coinciding with the Venice Film Festival, confirming the precise intent to strengthen the bond that exists between art and the cinema; the creation of OPEN Prize bears witness to this close and fertile relationship.
