Rene Coelho Award Winner 2010

We are please to announce that Kaweh Modiri former student at the Gerrit Rietveld Acadamy is the Rene Coelho Award winner 2010.

When judging the artworks considered for the Rene Coelho Prize 2010, our main question was “what are we looking for?” in this group of students who have produced such diverse artworks. If you want to compare a performance with an installation or a film with a kinetic object, you have to look for more general criteria.
So who has the highest potential? Who is best at gripping the diverse layers and associations an artwork can call into play? Which artwork has the largest amount of tension when it comes to the visual, conceptual and the textual? Who are we sure to see a lot more of in upcoming years in galleries, museums and on TV?
Naturally at the end of an academic course, most are masters in their craft, but some manage to go one step further and 'strike gold'.

Jury rapport
The jury feels that this applies to several of the submitted artworks. But we saw slightly more potential in one of them. The preciousness of this artworks lies in particular in the script which funny, layered and deals with current affairs. It plays with social stereotypes and literary conventions.
Kaweh Modiri's (pseudo?) autobiographical film 'Mijn Inbreker en Ik' tells the tale of a writer who stalks the thief who stole his laptop in a poetical reversal of the relationship between the perpetrator and the victim. In the course of the story, the initial sense of empowerment of the narrator changes into a new feeling of victimization: The writer can never lose sight of his main character.
Visually Modiri uses the DIY techniques of the YouTube generation. Simple techniques are used very efficiently, like the way in which images presented as found footage are combined with hidden camera images and a voice over to emphasize both the autobiographical and the documentary elements of the film.
Even though even in Modiri's work there is a world to be won, the jury is absolutely convinced that we will be hearing a lot more from him in the near future.

Kaweh Modiri Kaweh Modiri Mijn inbreker en ik, 2010 Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam read more »

Joris Strijbos Joris Strijbos Phase=Order, 2010 Royal Academy of Art, The Hague read more »