Winner of the 3rd Art Award: Amelie von Wulffen
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The artist Amelie von Wulffen received the Ruth Baumgarte Art Award in May 2017 at the Berlinische Galerie, retroactively for 2016. More than 200 guests from the worlds of art and culture, politics and society attended the award ceremony.
In consideration of the founder’s oeuvre, the jury honoured a candidate whose work is rooted in the tradition of representational art. Be it collage, drawing, painting, or installation: Amelie von Wulffen masterfully plays on a whole range of artistic levels at the same time. She consciously places portrayals of different time periods and styles next to each other, chooses unusual perspectives, and interweaves functional with decorative elements. In doing so, she arranges motifs from art history and collective memory next to personal perceptions and memories – sometimes ironically exaggerating, distorting, or complementing the ambivalent worlds she references. In her work, von Wulffen often finds a provocative way of testing the boundaries of convention and dilettantism. Nonetheless, her works do not omit the dark side of human existence but deal with themes such as anxiety, fear, loneliness, and grief. However, her works are neither restrained nor anxious but speak an intelligent, sometimes romantic language.
Amelie von Wulffen, born in Breitenbrunn (Upper Palatinate) in 1966, studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich with Daniel Spoerri and Olaf Metzel from 1987 to 1994. She lives and works in Berlin.
In line with the founder’s oeuvre, the award jury deliberately chose an artist whose works are in the tradition of representational art. Amelie von Wulffen masterfully plays on a whole range of artistic levels at the same time. Be it collage, drawing, painting or installation: she portrays different periods and styles next to each other and inside each other, takes unusual perspectives and therefore interweaves motives from a collective memory, art history and amateur painting with each other. She creates new worlds full of ambivalence where she also does not leave out the dark side of human existence but deals with the theme offensively and not without (self-)irony.
She gained international recognition, at the latest, with receiving the Villa Romana Award in 2000. In 2002, she received the ars viva Award, and in 2003, she participated in the 50th Venice Biennale. Two years later, in 2005, the Centre Pompidou in Paris as well as the Museum für Gegewartskunst Basel dedicated solo exhibitions to her. The Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich showed a major retrospective in 2015.