2013 James and Audrey Foster Prize
ICA Announces Finalists for Biennial Award
By: ICA - Nov 09, 2012
Sarah Bapst, Katarina Burin, Mark Cooper, and Luther Price were named finalists for the 2013 James and Audrey Foster Prize, the ICA's biennial award and exhibition program for Boston-area artists, the museum announced today. Bapst, Burin, Cooper, and Price will participate in an exhibition organized by Helen Molesworth, Barbara Lee Chief Curator, on view at the ICA from May 1 through July 21, 2013.
The winner of the prize—to be announced in May 2013—will be determined by a distinguished jury including Mark Dion, artist; Paul Ha, director of MIT List Visual Arts Center; and Ali Subotnick, curator at the Hammer Museum.
The James and Audrey Foster Prize is key to the ICA's efforts to nurture and recognize Boston-area artists of exceptional promise. The program creates a significant opportunity for four locally-based artists to exhibit their work in a leading contemporary art museum, and offers a substantial financial award of $25,000 to the winner and $1,500 to the finalists.
First established in 1999, the James and Audrey Foster Prize (formerly the ICA Artist Prize) expanded its format when the museum opened its new facility in 2006. James and Audrey Foster, passionate collectors and supporters of contemporary art, endowed the prize with a $1 million gift, ensuring the ICA's ability to sustain and grow the program for years to come.
“The James and Audrey Foster Prize acknowledges the wealth of talent in our community and gives our visitors a broader glimpse into the artistic innovation thriving in and around Boston,” said Jill Medvedow, Ellen Matilda Poss Director of the ICA.
"We congratulate Bapst, Burin, Cooper and Price on their nomination. They join an expanding list of artists who have grown artistically through this effort and we are excited to share their work with audiences in Boston and beyond,” said James Foster, ICA Trustee and Chairman, President and CEO of Charles River Laboratories.
Profiles of the 2013 Foster Prize Finalists
Sarah Bapst’s sculpture and works-on-paper explore how to approach the arbitrariness of art in making decisions about form and content. Bapst’s work has been included in numerous group exhibitions, including Selections 10, Bakalar Gallery at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Boston; Out of the Blue at the Attleboro Arts Museum, Attleboro, Massachusetts; and Marks, Target Gallery at the Torpedo Factory, Alexandria, Virginia. Awards include a Painting Fellowship from the Artists’ Foundation of Massachusetts, and a Visual Arts Fellowship for Works on Paper from the National Endowment for the Arts. Bapst received an M.F.A. from Cranbrook Academy of Art and a B.A. from Indiana University. She teaches at Massachusetts College of Art and Design.
Katarina Burin's drawings, structures, larger installations and collages are influenced by the documentation and circulation of historical architecture and design imagery. In February 2013 she will be co-organizing and participating in a show and series of events marking the 50th anniversary of the Carpenter Center at Harvard University, where she is currently Visiting Lecturer in Visual and Environmental Studies. Burin’s work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Andreas Grimm Galerie, New York and Munich; Lucile Corty, Paris; Clockwork, Berlin; Country Club, Cincinnati; and Form/Content, London. She has participated in group exhibitions at White Columns, New York; Participant Inc, New York; Künstlerhaus Palais Thurn and Taxis, Bregenz; Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin; and Gerhardsen Gerner, Berlin. Burin received her M.F.A. from Yale University and her B.F.A. from University of Georgia.
Mark Cooper's paintings and sculptures made with fiberglass pieces, layered with rice paper, paint, silk-screens, and varying images and patterns, explore dualities of culture and meaning. Cooper is known for his large public art pieces, made in collaboration with children, hospital patients, students, and other constituencies, for such institutions as the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Boston College Museum, Capital Children's Museum and Corcoran Museum in Washington, DC, DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Grounds, and the Whitney Museum of American Art at Philip Morris. He has received equal attention for his solo gallery and Museum exhibitions including his recent More Is More exhibition at Samson Gallery in Boston. Mark Cooper has received numerous grants and fellowships including an Open Society Institute Fellowship and Mass. Cultural Council Fellowships in Sculpture and in Crafts. He received his M.F.A. from Tufts University/School of the Museum of Fine Arts (SMFA), and is currently an Adjunct Professor at Boston College, as well as a Graduate and Regular Faculty at the SMFA. Cooper's work is in several major museums, as well as corporate and private collections.
Luther Price studied Sculpture and Media/Performing Arts at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, where he currently teaches. Known for his work as a filmmaker, Price also makes handmade slides out of found footage that he cuts up, reassembles, combines, and otherwise alters. He often presses other things between the two glass plates of the slides, projecting ants, dirt, and adhesive materials onto the gallery wall. Like his work with Super-8 and 16 mm film, these slides are studies of a dying technology, pushing and exploring the qualities of light projected through and onto a variety of materials. Price’s work is currently on view in the exhibition Second Nature: Abstract Photography Then and Now at the DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln, Massachusetts (through April 21, 2013). His work was selected for the 2012 Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and has also been presented at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the San Francisco Cinematheque, and the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, among other institutions.
Recipients of the Foster Prize to date include Ambreen Butt (1999), Laylah Ali (2000), Taylor Davis (2001), Alice Swinden Carter (2002), Douglas R. Weathersby (2003), Kanishka Raja (2004), Kelly Sherman (2006), Andrew Witkin (2008) and Amie Siegel (2010).