Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
Photo credit: Fredrik Åkum
2019-11-11 13:24 CET
Fredrik Åkum is awarded the 2020Beckers Art Award
The 33rd Beckers Art Award - a grant of 200 000 SEK - will this year beawarded to the 1987-born Gothenburg-based artist Fredrik Åkum. Hegraduated in 2013 from the Valand Academy in Gothenburg.
Jury's statementFredrik Åkum certainly has nerve when it comes to his colours and brushwork.Carefully laid cloth on the studio floor becomes a stage for the painted dance ofacrylics over the surface of the cloth.
The impatient rhythms of colour emerge almost manically with repetitions,
variations, and gaps – an intricate interaction between big and small.
This is an uplifting painting on the border between the figurative and theabstract, between the random and the absolutely controlled, between the lightand the darkness. This is a painting that demands obsession and passion –something so amazingly beautiful, marked by a complex perseverance.
Åkum undoubtedly captures us with his plant-based palette of colours, as well aswith his fanzines and small art books – his parallel artistic track – which invitevisitors to explore their own creativity. High or low, Åkum’s presence isundeniable.
Fredrik Åkum is awarded the 2020 Beckers Art Award of SEK 200,000 for hisability to make us understand through his palette that there is so much more inthe beauty of painting. Indeed, there is a completely new world of nuances.
Mårten Castenfors / on behalf of the jury
About the artistFredrik Åkum (b. 1987) took his Masters Degree in fine art at Valand Academyin 2013. Åkum’s artistry has its foundation in painting. In the paintingprocess, the focus is kept on repetition, distortion, delineation and differentmethods to reach abstractions within the figurative. Most often, the paintingsare shown in series with various premises: they may have had their startingpoint in a photograph, a photocopy, the dust on the glass surface of a copyingmachine or parts from previous works. The copying machine became anincreasingly common tool in Åkum’s painting processes as well as in hisinterest in fanzines and self-publishing, both practical and as an approach tothe canvas.
Åkum’s work is represented in European, Asian and American collections andin several public places in Sweden. In 2016, Fredrik Åkum was awarded StenA Olsson’s Cultural Grant, which included an exhibition at the Gothenburg ArtMuseum (2016-2017). He also received the Adlerbertska Cultural Grant at theGothenburg City Museum earlier the same year. Gallery Steinsland Berliner inStockholm represents Fredrik Åkum and during the fall of 2019 he showedthe exhibition Tear out pages/Tear of Jacqueline at the gallery.
Beckers Art Award
Beckers Art Award was established in 1987 and has since then proven to havea remarkable ability to identify young talent on the brink of a breakthrough intheir careers. The winner is awarded a grant, which from 2017 has beenraised from 150 000 to 200 000 SEK, and a solo exhibition that has, since2001, been arranged and held in collaboration with Färgfabriken.
The jury: Jenny Lindén Urnes, Mårten Castenfors and Magnus Jensner.
Kontaktpersoner
Elsa IsakssonPresskontaktProjektledare [email protected]+46 730 23 66 00
Karin [email protected]+46 736 84 27 2308 645 07 07
