Drawing Prize 2022 nominations: Olga Chernysheva, Chloe Piene, Gert & Uwe Tobias

On December 16, 2021, the Daniel & Florence Guerlain Foundation has announced the names of the three nominated artists for its 2022 Drawing Prize.

Olga Chernysheva, Russian artist, born in 1962 in Moscow. where she lives and works. Studied at the S.A. Guerassimov Institute of Cinematography (VGIK), Moscow, and the Rijksakademie, Amsterdam. Represented by the galleries: Iragui (Moscow) and Foxy Production (New York).

Olga Chernysheva transcribes scenes of everyday life. She has a lot to say about the present era, while astutely criticising today’s societies. Even without having visited the Moscow metro, we can easily recognise it (thanks to the profusion of chapkas) in her drawings. Other series depict carefree summers spent beside the river, when the mugginess of the city makes people yearn for the coolness of a corner of nature. Other drawings, either in charcoal or watercolour, bear witness to the senseless urban expansion, all in the name of so-called modernity. As a child, Chernysheva travelled a lot with her parents in express trains and was struck by the sight of ghostly silhouettes looming up on platforms of non-stopping stations in small towns destined to decline. From then on, she has liked to observe life—first of animals, then of human beings—in minute detail. She depicts a world with which we think we are familiar, but which reveals a hidden, silent strangeness. “Objects that seem simple to us may appear out of reach and baffle definition. What we have before our eyes all the time may be the most intriguing,” she says. She jots down compositions in sketchbooks that she has never shown to anybody; she takes photographs or uses images found on the Internet. But the photos are merely a source, whose poses and proportions she then modifies, so that realism is tinged with a hint of absurdity… *

Her works are in the collections of the MoMA (New York), Tate Modern (London), Fondation Louis Vuitton (Paris), the Moscow Museum of Modern Art, the Victoria & Albert Museum (London), the NBK (Berlin), Frac Bretagne and the private collection of Florence and Daniel Guerlain.

Chloe Piene, americain artist, born in 1972 in Stamford she lives and works in New York and Warsaw. Studied art history at Columbia, New York, and fine art at Goldsmiths College, London. Represented by the Galerie Barbara Thumm (Berlin).

The body is the focal point of Chloe Piene’s work. This endlessly scrutinised subject, whether in depth or superficially, enables her to show her raw yet tender vision of humanity. She is one of those artists who have always practised drawing; she freely admits that it became an obsession during childhood. She focused on her own anatomy at a very early age. It’s a subject that people believe they understand (wrongly in her view), one that allows us to question our reality, that changes into an object of pleasure or anguish in the face of sickness and death. Especially since the artist is an expert in art history and has long had a passion for pre-Christian and medieval myths and sacrifices. Her more or less figurative single figures are drawn in a space with no horizon line, leaving a bare margin on much of the sheet. “The body thus becomes space, and its form defines the world,” says Piene. In fact, her drawings, which may include hybrid creatures, enriched with masculine or animal bodies, show few elements apart from these entangled articulated or contorted figures. Drawing exclusively in charcoal, Piene may concentrate on a specific limb and her line may become obsessive or enraged, leaving the limb as a stump or at the root, fostering the notion of evolution or transformation… *

She features in the collections of the MoMA and Whitney Museum (New York), the Sammlung Hoffman (Berlin), the Florence and Daniel Guerlain donation to the MNAM-Centre Pompidou and the private collection of Florence and Daniel Guerlain.

Gert & Uwe Tobias, Romanian artists, born in 1973, live and work in Cologne. Studied at the Braunschweig University of Art (HBK). Represented by the Galerie Rodolphe Janssen (Brussels), Cassina Projects (Milan) and Contemporary Fine Arts (Berlin).

Twin brothers who work as a team, Gert & Uwe Tobias reflect on the notion of identity. Happily mixing diverse legacies, they create a parallel world that bears subtle witness to our present. The Tobias brothers seldom like to analyse their works and allow an aura of mystery to hover over their meaning and their working method. Having pursued their studies in the same place at the same time, at the end of their training they realised that they were more open to experiment when they worked together, while still retaining their own sense of identity. They do not create as a duet, but in turn discover what the other has done, before deciding whether to complete it or not. Consequently, they pave the way for what they call “the Tobias Project”, combining energy and a certain sense of humour, yet keeping at a distance. The subjects themselves, often composed of well-defined graphic forms, reveal a universe inhabited by folkloric figures, tender-hearted monsters or animals. Portraits are found alongside grimacing masks in obscure or hedonistic landscapes, like the imaginary worlds sketched on the tablecloth at Sunday lunches. Other works prove to be far more abstract. Gert & Uwe Tobias do not hide their attraction to the aesthetics of the Bauhaus, Oskar Schlemmer, Russian Constructivism, Edvard Munch and Japanese prints, and confess their passion for medieval legends and Édouard Vuillard’s palette. But they also enjoy playing with kitsch references to their native Transylvania and the fantasies surrounding Dracula…*

They feature in the collections of the MoMA (New York), the Hammer Museum (Los Angeles), the Kunstmuseum (Bonn), the Kupferstichkabinett (Berlin), the Frac Auvergne (France), the Florence and Daniel Guerlain donation to the MNAM-Centre Pompidou and in the private collection of Florence and Daniel Guerlain.

*extract from text by Marie Maertens

An exhibition of works by the three shortlisted artists will be presented at the Salon du Dessin from the 23 to 28 March 2022 (Palais Brongniart, Place de la Bourse, Paris). The jury will meet on the 24th of March at the Salon du Dessin and the winner will be announced the same day at noon.

The members of the jury are: Nassib Abou-Khalil (Lebanon), Joe Battat (Canada), Laurent Boillot (France), Laurence Danon (France), Laura Ningzheng (China), Bimpe Nkontchou (Nigeria), Pierre Rainero (France), Florence and Daniel Guerlain.

About the Prize
Awarded for the first time in 2007 and biennial until 2009, the Prize honours artists who make any unique work on paper, using graphic means: crayon, charcoal, red chalk, ink, wash tint, gouache, watercolour, pastels and felt… including collages and wall drawings but excluding computer and mechanical processes. The Prize concerns artists for whom drawing on paper or cardboard is a significant part of their work.

The three artists nominated each year by a commission of seven experts may be of French or foreign nationality on condition that they entertain a privileged cultural link with France through institutional exhibitions, studies or being in residence there.

Following a working meeting with the artists, visits to studios and analysis, the committee selects three artists whose work is presented to a jury that changes with each prize and chooses the winner.

The Prize’s endowment is 25,000 EUR: 15,000 EUR for the laureate and 5,000 EUR for each of the two other artists. A work by the winner is offered,  by the Foundation to the Musée national d’art moderne Prints and Drawings Department.

Created in 1996, the Daniel & Florence Guerlain Contemporary Art Foundation organized exhibitions in the family property for ten years, before Daniel and Florence Guerlain decided to devote the Foundation’s activities to the Contemporary Drawing Prize. 

The prize receives the support of “Le Cercle des Amis”, La Banque Neuflize OBC, La Maison Guerlain, Artcurial, Artprice by ArtMarket.com, Voisin Consulting Life Sciences, le Groupe Élysées Monceau, le Groupe Pasteur Mutualité, Le Salon du Dessin, Les Beaux-Arts de Paris, la Maison Champagne Ruinart, Vodka Beluga, Rova Caviar Madagascar.

Past laureates: 2021: Françoise Pétrovitch (France) / 2020: Juan Uslé (Spain) / 2019: Claire Morgan (Ireland) / 2018: Mamma Andersson (Sweden) / 2017: Ciprian Muresan (Romania) / 2016: Cameron Jamie (United States) / 2015: Jockum Nordström (Sweden) / 2014: Tomasz Kowalski (Poland) / 2013: Susan Hefuna (Egypt, Germany) / 2012: Jorinde Voigt (Germany) / 2011: Marcel Van Eeden (Netherlands) / 2010: Catharina Van Eetvelde (Belgium) / 2009: Sandra Vasquez de la Horra (Chile) / 2007: Silvia Bächli (Switzerland)