Frieze announces new winner of the Cartier Award, Wilfredo Prieto

Posted on May 9, 2008 at 2:28 PM.

The winner of the Cartier Award, Cuban artist Wilfredo Prieto, is a talented young conceptual artist whose works often take the form of site-specific installations. His winning proposal was chosen from over 400 applications submitted by artists across the world. Frieze curator Neville Wakefield describes Prieto as 'standing out amongst his peers for creating art that levitates the ordinary.'

Born in 1978, Wilfredo Prieto went on to graduate from the Instituto Superior de Arte de la Universidad de Habana in 2002. He has exhibited at SMAK (Ghent) in 2008,
the 52nd Venice Biennial in 2007, at the Kadist Art Foundation and Apolitical at the
Louvre Museum, Paris as well as the VIII Havana Biennal in 2006 and in A moment of
Silence at the Dia Art Foundation in New York in 2003.

Prieto was also a John Simon Guggenheim Fellow in 2006. "With great economy of means he addresses issues of sculptural and geo-political accumulation in ways that are at once provocative, charming and poetic...," says Wakefield.

Widely acknowledged as one of the world's leading art awards, the Cartier Award forms an exciting and highly visible element of Cartier's long-standing commitment to supporting contemporary art. It provides an extraordinary opportunity for non-UK based emerging artists to realise a major new work; site-specific installations, performance, film, video or print, as part of Frieze Projects. The award provides project production costs of up to £10,000, an artist's fee of £1,000, and a three month residency at the Gasworks.

At the Frieze show in London this October, Prieto will present a Pond, a site-specific installation of over 100 oil drums. A mirrored pond-like effect will be created by the liquid in the drums. The surface of which being punctured by the presence and movement of a frog. This work will be beautiful and poetic, reflecting the current international obsession with accumulation and growth.

http://www.cartier.com/
http://www.frieze.com/

Frieze Art Fair 2008
The Cartier Award 2008
Portrait
Courtesy the artist and Nogueras Blanchard, Barcelona
Copyright: Wilfredo Prieto, 2008