Official award ceremony for Peter und Luise Hager Prize 2020

On 31st January, 2020, the Peter und Luise Hager Prize was awarded for the ninth time.

Susanne Trockle, Board Member of the Peter und Luise Hager Foundation, and Gabriela Gross, member of the Board of Trustees, presented the awards for the three most convincing entries in this year's contest during the opening ceremony of the HBKsaar Gallery.

This prize, which is awarded by the Peter und Luise Hager Foundation along with the Saar University of Fine Arts (HBKsaar), honours outstanding HBKsaar students for their artistic and creative projects and productions. This year's brief was the artistic and creative discussion of the topic of ‘Believing in something’.

From all submitted entries, a jury selected eleven different viewpoints, which will be presented as part of the 2020 walking tour in the HBKsaar Gallery exhibit, and will then move on to the Saarland Gallery exhibit in Berlin by mid-March. From these eleven exhibit contributions, the jury then selected three prize winners. On behalf of the Peter und Luise Hager Foundation, the jury included Susanne Trockle and Gabriela Gross. On behalf of HBKsaar, the jury was represented by Prof. Ivica Maksimovic, Prof. Beate Mohr and Prof. Dr. Matthias Winzen. Additional jury members were Dr. Sebastian Baden, Kunsthalle Mannheim; and Dr. Andrea Weber as a staff member of the Saarland Gallery, Berlin. 

The list of winners:

1st prize: Tim Jungmann ‘Happiness’

Tim Jungmann has created an installation that may seem simple on the surface, but probes a deep question. It's a wall shelf with a long row of self-help books on how to be happy. It asks the subtle question, will happiness always elude us?

2nd prize: Fellowship Maria Pauer ‘Action 1: minus 18 meters’

The Fellowship Maria Pauer shows a multimedia installation that deals with a German national war memorial from 1922. The artwork consists of several multi-media elements: the research and excavation done in front of the Niedersachsenstein war memorial in Worpswede, a video recording this action, the info booklet, the lettering on the gallery wall and how this text was eventually erased and corrected.

3rd prize: Johanna Schlegel ‘Whiteout’

How real is a photographic image? Is it a true likeness of something that exists, or did exist? Or is a photograph only the sum of its components, i.e. either black and white or colour ink printed on paper? Johanna Schlegel investigates all of these questions by slowly dissolving the photographic material, the carrier of our photographic belief, in a corrosive liquid and by recording this process of dissolution in a video.

In addition to the artwork of the three award winners, the artwork of the other eight students will be exhibited at HBKsaar, and starting mid-March, in the Saarland Gallery in Berlin. The artists are: Julia Gerhards, Léo Himburg, Tanja Huberti, Mario Maurer, Jonathan Maus, Anica Seidel, Antonia Stakenkötter and Luise Talbot.

To know more:  Peter und Luise Hager Foundation website