On a black blanket are distributed a deflated ball, CDs, a pair of sandals, multi-colored masks, used cigarette boxes, a cap, dented cans, underwear and a swimsuit, all made of oil-painted fabrics. Each piece —all done in oil on canvas— is a work in itself, and the whole creates a choral ensemble. The installation, which is completed by a Styrofoam panel from which hang, made in the same way, sunglasses arranged hypothetically for sale, entitled "La Mantera" (2020), won the Federico Jorge Klemm First Prize for the Visual Arts 2021.

In the edition of its 25th anniversary, the awarded works are five. Two prizes with acquisition, two mentions without acquisition and a special mention of the jury, also without acquisition. The jury, made up of Gabriel Baggio, Valeria Gonzalez, Matilde Marín, Florencia Qualina and Javier Villa, did not have an easy job. Of the 1,400 works that responded to the call, they reached a selection of a set of 41 works that make up the sample of this 2021 edition, which opens on Wednesday, November 17.

Mariana Lopez's work is highly original in the use of the recognizable blankets worn by street vendors, often by Afro-descendants, in any Western capital. And she continues the exploration that she showed this year in her participation in the exhibition Los Mareados at the Fundación Cazadores. The way of challenging the verisimilitude and the symbolic load of Lopez's work is suggestive and her aesthetic resolution accompanies the conceptual search. As is tradition, with this first prize, in addition to 600,000 pesos for the acquisition, comes the possibility of an individual exhibition in the space for next year.

The second prize of this edition of the Klemm Foundation Award went to the work "Nibiru II", by Federico Lanzi. It is a black wall, made up of 60 glazed ceramic tiles that end up forming a large 180 x 200 centimeter base on which the artist distributes figures in gold luster that play between rock art, science fiction and childlike silhouettes. . With a kind of constellation that dominates everything from above, the forms of animals, men and spaceships represent the apocalyptic and at the same time playful atmosphere of a mythological celestial body, between real and fictional, between scientific and literary. This award is worth 400,000 pesos.

The two mentions were received by Donjo León and Verónica Meloni, with 100,000 pesos each. León's work is an untitled work, made in 2019 and confirming the artist's inquiries in his latest exhibitions. The experimental search to give vitality to the works using materials that tend to change is resolved in this case in a boxed piece of more than one meter per side, in which different forms of wood are treated with asphalt paint and mineral salt aggregates, sodium chloride and copper and iron sulfates that change in tone over time. The wood cuts are superimposed on each other, combining curves and straight lines almost as if it were a specific work of art on a black background that increases the visual nerve of the work and gives it a very interesting capacity for impact.

The other mention, that of Verónica Meloni, acts in another register. It is a more intimate piece, which requires an almost artisanal work that the artist from Cordoba does to modify an original object. It is a not very large plaster sculpture, it does not reach 50 centimeters in height, from which Meloni gradually extracts shapes by carving and sanding. Little or almost nothing remains of the original element. Just two sheep heads, one above and one below, appear between the different planes, curves and counter-curves that the artist's hand created from the first sculpture. The combination of highly polished spaces with others that are rougher and more marked in the material give the piece a personality and a beauty that tends to escape its limits. It is also very interesting to put this work in dialogue with the latest works by Meloni, who is more involved in public art and the combination of languages ​​linked to actions and linking them.

The jury's special mention went to "Eclipse de Pintura Naranja", an 80 x 70 cm acrylic on canvas by the artist Gonzalo Beccar Varela. It is a non-figurative work, with a geometric composition, where a plane of intense red color interposes the beams of white light that seem to emanate from a distant and intense source. The work is compositionally interesting and the play between the different planes works visually, projecting strength and subtlety at the same time.

In the cut of the exhibition, the enormous variety of supports, techniques, materials and languages ​​that are expressed draws attention. The video art pieces coexist with ceramics, paintings, sculptures and installations that have, if the gaze is sharpened, a subtle but present unifying perspective. The chosen works speak, with different degrees of literalness, about the social world and its problems. All the works show an interest in inquiring about relationships with the planet, about people's relationships with each other and about their identities.

It should not be surprising, then, that the stylistic and visual discourse differences serve to reflect on these concepts while at the same time showing the ductility of the present of the contemporary national scene. Undoubtedly, the complexity expressed in the selected works justifies the intense debates and arguments that we know the jury had to give in order to reach a consensus on the award instances.

The 2021 Klemm Foundation award, which recovers the possibility of face-to-face attendance lost the previous year, reinforces its institutional commitment to Argentine contemporary art by recognizing artists who can establish a genuine dialogue with the collection and who respect and honor the way of understanding the art of his mentor.

XXV Klemm Prize 2021 25 years! Place: Federico J. Klemm Foundation, Marcelo T. de Alvear 626 Hours: Monday to Friday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Date: until February 22 Admission: free