Henraux Prize 2018, here are the winning sculptures

Two months after the names of the winners were announced, the four winning works of the 2018 edition (the fourth) of the Henraux Prize, awarded annually to sculptors who have distinguished themselves through their works in marble, have been revealed. This year, the awards went to Francesco Arena, David Horvitz and Diego Marcon, and a special mention went to the collective Anto. Milotta - Zlatolin Donchev.

Francesco Arena presented Metro cubo di marmo con metro lineare di ash, a work very representative of his artistic journey, in which a noble material like marble is confronted with a prosaic and volatile material like cigar ash. This work stems directly from research done by the artist at Henraux. In particular, Arena wanted to dwell on the huge marble blocks, so absolute in their archaic simplicity, and make them the starting point for his work. Marble is an image of durability over time, a geological time within which individual existence disappears, while ash is an image of how impermanent human existence is. The work is the union of two different timelines, that of stone and that of man, the millions of years on one side and the decades on the other.

David Horvitz, with his work Tentatively Untitled, seeks fragility, not solidity, in marble. Sculpture possesses a feeling of permanence but nothing lasts, and even marble, according to the artist, is just the remnant of an ocean compressed over time. Horvitz wanted to disperse a block of marble he identified in a mountaintop quarry, reducing it into fragments that the public can take away with them. The sculpture will not disappear but will be dispersed, consigning it to the transience of imagination and memory, like the story of a Japanese American soldier who died in World War II that Horvitz reactivates through two photographs commemorating him in both Los Angeles and Pietrasanta.

Diego Marcon’s work, Ludwig, is the “marble materialization” of a child made from a 3-D model, a small monument to the fragility and ambivalence of life. In Marcon’s work, the figure of the child plays a crucial role in generating feeling and empathy. It is a vulnerable figure that mostly stimulates compassion, activating a desire to “care.” At the same time, that of childhood is a condition that all adults have experienced but which becomes alien and mysterious again when it is overcome.

Finally, Anto. Milotta - Zlatolin Donchev proposed Libro di vetta, a site-specific project that draws inspiration from Mount Altissimo and reverses Michelangelo’s idea of matter and art, turning the mountain into sculpture when the sculpture itself contains the mountain within itself. The artists address the complex relationship between man and nature through a project born from morphological observation of the territory and reflections on the processes that define its landscape. Libro di Vetta is a sculpture suspended in the void. Entering inside the quarry is like entering inside a place of worship. It is no coincidence that, for Milotta and Donchev, an area of the Cervaiole is nicknamed the Cathedral, because it is an empty space carved out of the heart of the mountain that conveys a feeling of grandeur and also releases energy through reverberation and acoustics. The suspended peak is nothing but a vision: the pure vision of a metaphysical and unreal world.

The works were judged by a jury composed of Edoardo Bonaspetti, art critic, President of the Jury, assisted by Ilaria Bonacossa, Director of Artissima, Eike Schmidt, Director of the Uffizi Gallery, Roberta Tenconi, curator at the Pirelli HangarBicocca Foundation, and Andrea Viliani, Director of Madre, Donnaregina Museum of Contemporary Art.

“The Fondazione Henraux Prize,” explains Edoardo Bonaspetti, “is an ambitious and articulated project aimed at developing research around the potential of marble. The properties of this material are not only related to sculpture in the traditional sense but to innovative areas of thought and creation. In a unique technological and artisanal context, the artists of this edition had the opportunity to confront a productive reality that combines digital culture and the values of centuries-old craftsmanship. In a process of contamination for the entire company, the artists tested applications and expressive languages in dialogue between different disciplines, enriching alternative skills and models.”

Pictured are the winning works of the Henraux Prize (from left to right, Francesco Arena, David Horvitz, Diego Marcon and Anto. Milotta - Zlatolin Donchev)

Henraux Prize 2018, here are the winning sculptures

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