Diego Marcon wins the MAXXI BVLGARI Prize

Diego Marcon’s poetic and evocative work Ludwig wins for its capacity to interpret, through a synthesis of diverse idioms, the spirit of our times

His work, together with that of Talia Chetrit and Invernomuto, will remain on show through to November 4, 2018

With his work Ludwig, Diego Marcon (Busto Arsizio, 1985) has won the 2018 edition of the MAXXI BVLGARI Prize, the museum’s project supporting and promoting young artists, which this year has been renewed, reinforced and projected onto the international art scene that also to the support of an exceptional partner such as Bulgari. The winner received his prize from the Oscar-winning director Giuseppe Tornatore, president of the project’s committee of honour, in the presence of Giovanna Melandri, President of the Fondazione MAXXI, and Jean Christophe Babin, CEO of the Bvlgari Group. Together with them were the jurists Yuko Hasegawa and David Elliott and the director of MAXXI Arte, Bartolomeo Pietromarchi.

The international jury composed of David Elliott, independent curator, Yuko Hasegawa, Artistic Director of MOT in Tokyo, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Artistic Director of the Serpentine Galleries in London, Hou Hanru, Artistic Director of MAXXI, and Bartolomeo Pietromarchi, Director of MAXXI Arte, chose Marcon’s work “for the original synthesis of analogue and digital languages, for its capacity to interpret with great efficacy the contradictory spirit of our era through fragments of the musical and artistic tradition of the past; for the poetic and evocative way in which it brings together the existential and global dimensions.” Marcon’s work will now be added to the MAXXI Arte Collection.

Ludwig is a video projected onto a full wall and created using the CGI (computer-generated imagery) technique used to render digital special effects in film, television, advertising and video simulation games. The protagonist is a child who lights a match in a suspended space that we later discover to be that of a ship at the mercy of a storm. As the match burns, the child sings a song with verses written by the artist about the desperation and fatigue of existence. The match than extinguishes, the music stops before the action starts over in a loop. The implacable reiteration of the scene generates a claustrophobic and obsessive atmosphere. The score for piano and voice is by Federico Chiari, played by Marco de Gaspari and sung by Gianluigi Sartori, a student singer with the Coro Voci Bianche of the Scala Theatre Academy of Milan. This work furthers Marcon’s experimentation into the image and the evocative power of that which is not immediately visible.

The works of Talia Chetrit, Invernomuto and Diego Marcon will remain on show in the exhibition curated by Giulia Ferracci until November 4, 2018, a fluid display and a true immersion in the artistic universe of the artists whose projects present the multiple allusions in their work.