Winners
Agata Ingarden, Yan Tomaszewski, Marta Romankiv are the three artists who impressed the jury with their works and won the first edition of the international competition for visual artists — Allegro Prize 2020.
MAIN AWARD — 35 000 PLN
Agata Ingarden (FR)
In Agata Ingarden’s works, uncertainty about the future seeps and leaks before our eyes, like liquid sugar, which is one of the materials in her installations. What awaits us in the future that emerges from her implementation? A dystopian world, and in it — our home. The home of our memories, the one that we are trying to build here and now. Ingarden shows great sensitivity of materials, shapes and their properties. Her organic sculptures, with a strong sense of independency, absorb our reality — homes and office spaces. These sculptures are like independent organisms discussing over again the relationship between nature and technology. Loss, trembling, fear, instability — Ingarden’s voice is the voice of young generation, for whom time is of particular importance — its passing is the only certainty they have.
SECOND AWARD — 10 000 PLN
YAN TOMASZEWSKI (FR)
As an art historian, Yan Tomaszewski roots his works in the avant-garde. As an artist — he builds his own alternative space. In his creative practice, the creative history process parallel to the official one is preceded by a thorough research. The end result of this research is a video work, equally based on facts, as fiction/beliefs. It creates a whole universe of artificial objects, foreign organisms, colourful characters, and emotions.
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Yan Tomaszewski, Gangnam Beauty, 2020 video steel, courtesy of the artist -
Yan Tomaszewski, Gangnam Beauty, 2020 video steel, courtesy of the artist -
Yan Tomaszewski, Tchouri, exhibition views on the tarmac of the Air and Space Museum (FR), 2018; mass-coloured concrete, steel, 8 x 5 x 5 m, courtesy of the artist and the Air and Space Museum -
Tchouri, 2018, mass-coloured concrete, steel, 8 x 5 x 5 m; 4K video, 04'07'' ; borosilicate glass, stainless steel, PVC
THIRD AWARD — 5 000 PLN
MARTA ROMANKIV (UA/PL)
Despite Romankiv’s young age, she is a very conscious, mature, and socially engaged artist. She boldly enters the public space to tackle the major problems of eastern labour migration. Her gestures of whitening flags or postulate to lift borders, albeit they result directly from the geopolitical relations between Poland and its neighbours, seem to have a universal value and the potential to resonate in many places in the modern world. In search of another person — the Other, withdrawn and hidden in the shadows of hard work, Romankiv comes out of the safe space for an art institution to infuse into an artistic gesture new agency of political importance.
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Marta Romankiv, Immigrant take a vote, presentation -
Marta Romankiv, Immigrant take a vote, presentation -
Marta Romankiv, German Flag, 2020, installation, courtesy of the artist -
Marta Romankiv, Architects, 2019, video, 06:26 min, courtesy of the artist
special mention
Anna Zaradny (PL)
special mention
Magdalena Lazar (PL)
special mention
Rafal Zajko (UK)
special mention
Horacy Muszyński (PL)
special mention
Open Group (UA/PL)
special mention
Barbara Gryka (PL)
special mention
Honza Zamojski (PL)
special mention
Veneta Androva (DE)
special mention
Emilia Kurylowicz (DE)
special mention
Paweł Starzec (PL)
About
Allegro and Contemporary Lynx are proud to announce
the second edition of the Allegro Prize competition with a
total prize pool of 50 000 PLN.
We aim to:
- Give artists the chance to present their works to an extremely wide range of Polish and international recipients.
- Through this financial support give artists the opportunity to fully devote themselves to artistic development.
- Create a platform where art lovers and professionals from all over the world can meet artists selected by the prestigious jury panel.
- Search for new talent and promote the visual arts.
Calling all:
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Artists from any country, all ages
representing all forms of visual arts.
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Students and graduates
of art schools and colleges.
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Artists who haven’t graduated
but have documented artistic pathway.
No entry fee
To help artists in the difficult situation caused by the coronavirus pandemic, the organisers decided to waive all fees to enter the prize. Participation in the competition is free for everyone.
Prizes
Main Award
35 000 pln
- Article in Contemporary Lynx Magazine 1(15)2021.
- Article with works published in Contemporary Lynx Weekly Online and on the Allegro Prize website.
- Article posted on the social media (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, Newsletter).
- Annual subscription for the print edition of Contemporary Lynx Magazine (delivery cost included).
Second Award
10 000 pln
- Article with works published in Contemporary Lynx Weekly Online and on the Allegro Prize website.
- Article posted on the social media (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, Newsletter).
- Annual subscription for the print edition of Contemporary Lynx Magazine (delivery cost included).
Third Award
5 000 pln
- Article with works published in Contemporary Lynx Weekly Online and on the Allegro Prize website.
- Article posted on the social media (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, Newsletter).
- Annual subscription for the print edition of Contemporary Lynx Magazine (delivery cost included).
Special Mentions
10 x
- Article with works published in Contemporary Lynx Weekly Online and on the Allegro Prize website.
- Article posted on the social media (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, Newsletter).
- A copy of the latest Contemporary Lynx Magazine.
Additional Gifts
100 x
- A copy of the latest Contemporary Lynx Magazine.
Jury
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Anda Rottenberg
Curator, art historian
Exhibitions curator, art historian and critic, educated at the University of Warsaw, MA 1970. Employed in the Polish Academy of Sciences 1973–1986. Founder of the EGIT Art Foundation, 1986; Warsaw Soros Center of Contemporary Art, 1992; Institute of Art Promotion Foundation, 1997. Director of the ‘Zachęta’ National Art Gallery in Warsaw 1993–2001; Visiting consultant of the Museum of Modern Art, New York 2001–2002; President of the Program Advisory board and the Program Director of the Warsaw Museum of Modern Art 2005–2007.
As of 1980 curator and co-curator of many international exhibitions such as: 1st Kwanju Biennale, South Korea; Aspects-Positions 1949–1999, 50 Years of Art in Middle Europe (Vienna-Budapest-Barcelona-Birmingham 2000); L’Autre Moitie de l’Europe (Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume 2000/2001, Paris); Where is Abel, Thy Brother (Zachęta Gallery, Warsaw), 1995; Forgetting, Weseburg Museum, Bremen, 2000; Continental Breakfast, Belgrade 2004; Warsaw-Moscow (Zachęta Gallery, Warsaw/Tretiakowskaya Gallery Moscow) 2004/2005; Side by side. Poland-Germany, 1000 years of history in art (Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin) 2011; VOID, Nowy Sącz City, 2012; UNI/JA-UNI-ON, Open Air, City of Lublin, Poland, 2013; Progress and Hygiene (Zachęta National Gallery Warsaw) 2014, Adolescent Perspective, Silesia Museum, Katowice, 2018.
Curator (1993–1995) and commissioner of the Polish Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 1993–2001 and the Sao Paolo Biennale 1997–2007 (among others).
Author of the numerous texts on art translated on most of European as well as Japanese and Korean languages; recently published books: Art in Poland 1945–2005, 2005; Draught — texts on Polish art of the 80-s, 2009; biographical book Here you are, 2009; Never mind. Talks with Anda Rottenberg (interview by Dorota Jarecka), 2014; Laszlo Feher, Budapeszt, 2016; Stanisław Fijałkowski, Berlin, 2016; Miroslaw Balka, Hangar Bicocca, Milano, 2017; Berlin depression, 2018.
Academic teacher of curatorial studies (Bard College, NY; Jagiellonian University, Kraków; Warsaw University; Academy of Fine Art, Warsaw); guest master class seminars at the Akademie der Kunste, Munich and Aalto University, Helsinki.
Co-founder and a board member of Manifesta 1; Fellow of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin 2015/2016; Member of the selection committee of Documenta 12.
Currently appointed the Culture Editor of ‘Vogue Polska’ magazine (as of 2017).
Author of the personal weekly radio broadcast Andymateria as of 2012.
Acting also as a freelance art writer and curator. -
Jakub Julian Ziółkowski
Painter, sculptor and draughtsman
Painter, sculptor and draughtsman born in Zamość (1980) collaborating with the Warsaw-based Foksal Gallery Foundation and Hauser & Wirth.
He graduated from the Jan Matejko Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow. Painter, sculptor and draughtsman, author of solo exhibitions such as: Holy Nothing, the Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art, Warsaw, 2018; Ian Moon, Hauser & Wirth, London, 2017; Glimmers, Foksal Gallery Foundation, Warsaw, 2017; Sick of Love, Café Nhà Sàn, Hanoi, 2016; Hokaina, Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, 2010. He participated in a number of group shows, including Wild at Heart. Portrait and self-portrait in Poland after 1989, Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, 2018; Nowness, Contemporary Art Gallery, Opole, 2017; State of Life. Polish Contemporary Art within a Global Circumstance, National Art Museum of China, Beijing, 2015; Painters of Modern Life, The Box, Los Angeles, 2014; As You Can See. Polish Art Today, Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, 2014; Painting Between The Lines, CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco, 2011; The Generational: Younger Than Jesus, New Museum, New York, 2009. His pieces featured in the exhibition The Encyclopedic Palace which was held as part of the 55th Venice Biennale (2013), the Gwangju Biennale (2010) and the Athens Biennale (2009). He lives and works in Kraków.
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Brodka Brodka
Art enthusiast and collector
She shot to stardom early as a teenager thanks to a popular talent show. Then, she had to prove that she has what it takes. It wasn’t easy, but ever since the release of her 2010 album Granda there’s absolutely no doubt that Brodka deserves her place at the top. Well, that’s the Polish highlander spirit for you…
She kept the momentum well into 2012 and recorded LAX, the phenomenal EP which showed her new dance-loving side. Those who saw Brodka perform at concerts know they should expect the unexpected — killer song chorus, dance beats and alternative explorations. Her next album also came out of left field. Clashes is a record rife with antithesis — grim church organs mixed with vibrant punk rock sound, lyrics about passion and crazy love, but also about the alluring abyss of death. The album produced by the Grammy-winning Noah Georgeson (who famously collaborated with Devendra Banhart, Joanna Newsom and The Strokes) had its global premiere in 2016. Brodka showcased her new stage persona at festivals, as well as during a ten-concert tour around the UK. She continued touring in 2018 and released her MTV Unplugged album, which according to Monika herself is the culmination of a certain stage in her life as a music artist.
Brodka has been working on her (already!) fifth album ever since. New singles will be released in autumn this year.
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Werner Jerke
Art collector and founder of the Jerke Museum
Art collector and founder of the Jerke Museum, a Polish art museum in Recklinghausen, Germany.
Born in 1957, in Wielowieś, near Gliwice, he obtained his master’s degree in geography from the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. He moved to Germany in 1981 and studied medicine in Bonn. Since 1996, he runs his own ophthalmology practice in Herten, near Recklinghausen. He also completed a post-graduate art market programme at the Andrzej Frycz Modrzewski Academy in Kraków.
He’s a collector of Polish contemporary art and a propagator of Polish culture in Germany. The Jerke Museum in Recklinghausen (in the Ruhr-Area), which he established in 2016, boasts about the collection of works by some of the greatest artists of the 20th and 21st century. Pieces from his collection are presented on exhibitions all around the world, including the works of Alina Szapocznikow which featured on the artist’s retrospective exhibition at the MoMA in New York, as well as in Brussels, Los Angeles and Columbus, Ohio. In addition, the exhibition of Katarzyna Kobro and Władysław Strzemiński, which was held in Centre Pompidou in Paris, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid and Kunstmuseum Den Haag (former Gemeentemuseum Den Haag), did also include both artists’ pieces from Jerke’s collection.
Over eighty artworks from Werner Jerke’s collection were presented in Atlas Sztuki, Łódź (2015). While the abstract pieces were showcased in Düsseldorf in the spring of 2014. For many years, Werner Jerke has sponsored several meetings of Polish artists focusing on geometry (e.g. in Radziejowice and earlier in the Centre of Polish Sculpture in Orońsko).
The latest project of Werner Jerke had its premiere at Zachęta National Gallery of Art in Warsaw (November, 2019). He has written the script and directed The Power of Art, a film that shows his subjective point of view on Gruppa, one of the most important Polish artistic formations of the 1980s.
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Łukasz Ronduda
Art historian, film director, curator
Art historian, film director, curator of the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw and professor at the Faculty of Management of Visual Culture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw.
Author of books: Sztuka polska lat 70. Awangarda (Polish Art of the 70s. The Avant-garde, 2009); Strategie subwersywne w sztukach medialnych (Subversive Strategies in the Media Arts, 2005); Warpechowski, Konieczny, Uklański, Bodzianowski. Warpechowski, Dawicki (2010). W połowie puste (Half Empty), a novel he wrote together with Łukasz Gorczyca, was published in 2011.
Editor of publications such as: Warsztat Formy Filmowej (Workshop of the Film Form, co-editor: Marika Kuźmicz, 2017); Kino-Sztuka. Zwrot kinematograficzny w polskiej sztuce współczesnej (Polish Cine Art, or the Cinematographic Turn in Polish Contemporary Art, co-editor: Jakub Majmurek, 2015); Oskar Hansen. Opening Modernism. On Open Form Architecture, Art and Didactics (co-editor: Aleksandra Kędziorek, 2014); KwieKulik (co-editor: Georg Schöllhammer, 2012).
Curator of exhibitions such as: Down With the Pimps of Art! Relationships Between Punk and Art (co-curator: Michał Woliński, Warsaw Stock Exchange, 2006); New National Art (co-curator: Sebastian Cichocki, Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, 2012); As You Can See. Polish Art Today (co-curator: Sebastian Cichocki, Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, 2014); Bread and Roses (co-curator: Natalia Sielewicz, Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, 2016); What Is Enlightenment? (co-curators: Goshka Macuga, Tomasz Szerszeń, Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, 2018). Alongside Łukasz Mojsak, he was the curator of the Polish Pavilion at the Venice Biennale — Flight, Roman Stańczak (2019).
Director of feature films: Performer (co-director: Maciej Sobieszczański, 2015) and Heart of Love (2017). Currently, he’s working on his third film, All Our Fears (scheduled to release in 2021). Member of the Board of Directors of the Directors’ Guild of Poland.
Winner of the Jerzy Stajuda Prize 2018.
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Jacek Weichert
Segment Director, Allegro
Studied art history and attended Interdisciplinary Individual Studies in Humanities and Society (MISH) in Poznań and Warsaw. In the years 2010–2013, he worked as a PR & Marketing Manager at the Bolesław Prus Academic Bookshop. He has been employed at Allegro since 2013 — as a Product Manager, he’s coordinated the development process of the Books and Graphic Novels Category, including Jacek Dukaj’s interactive book ‘Starość aksolotla.’ He has held the position of Business Unit Manager of Media and Entertainment (since 2016), followed by the Segment Director of Books and Media, Collectibles and Art (since 2018). Alongside his team, he oversees multiple projects, for instance, Allegro’s ‘Art Collector’s Zone’ aimed at galleries and auction houses.
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Dobromiła & Sylwia Błaszczyk & Krasoń
Editors-in-Chief, directors
Dobromiła Błaszczyk — art historian, curator and author of texts about art. She’s the co-founder of the Contemporary Lynx organisation and press outlet established in London (2013), as well as the editor-in-chief of Contemporary Lynx Magazine and President of the Contemporary Lynx Foundation in Warsaw. She obtained her MA degree in art history from the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. At Starmach Gallery, where she worked in the years 2009–2016, she organised and coordinated exhibitions, art fairs and projects in close collaboration with institutions and art collectors from Poland and abroad. Previously she worked with, among others, Galerie Parrotta Contemporary Art in Stuttgart, lokal_30 in Warsaw, Kraków Photomonth Festival, Art Agenda NOVA and East of Art Foundation (2007–2008). She was involved in organising the 7th edition of Biennale Jeune Création Européenne in Montrouge, France. Member of competition juries, lecturer, moderator and participant of panel discussions held in Poland and the UK.
Deadlines
Start
30
June
deadline
10
November
shortlist
01
December
winners
15
December
No entry fee
To help artists in the difficult situation caused by the coronavirus pandemic, the organisers decided to waive all fees to enter the prize. Participation in the competition is free for everyone.
Articles
Portfolio: SAGG NAPOLI Multidisciplinary artist working with performance, video, sculpture, installation, fashion design and sound curation.
The artist devotes her practice to cross-examining gender politics, economy, along with portrayals of class and ethnicity in high and popular culture.
Portfolio: Filipka Rutkowska She is a multidisciplinary artist working with performance, video and drawing.
Her work is primarily focused on sexuality, society and identity from a gender-fluid perspective. In her practice, she explores how queerness can become a form of narration about society as a whole.
Portfolio: Veronika Cherednychenko Her body of work ranges from large-scale public art to VR projects.
Her artistic practice appeals to the unconscious, provoking the imagination in an attempt to look into the future or into oneself: nature, organic forms, growth dynamics, transformation, but also decay and death, fundamental and mundane processes for all living beings.
Organisers
Initiators:
The largest Polish e-commerce platform, which since 2018 has been promoting antique and contemporary art through the Collector's Zone programme.
allegro.pl
An international and independent magazine devoted to art, culture, photography, design and art collecting.
contemporarylynx.co.ukPartners:
Media partners:
