The Award Winners The following works will be on display:
The young
Photographer Cyril Porchet In his series «Séduction,» created as his graduation project at ECAL in 2009, he depicts Baroque church choirs from some of Europe’s most famous churches. The large-format color photographs, mounted under acrylic glass, draw the viewer in with their brilliance and opulent splendor, offering a sensory experience that captures the essence of the Baroque «Theatrum sacrum,» as the Federal Office of Culture (BAK) notes in a press release.
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The two of them
Set designers Dimitri de Perrot and Martin Zimmermann They had already won the 2008 Swiss Federal Design Prize for «Gaff Aff.» Now, for their dance piece «Öper öpis,» they have created a stage floor consisting of a giant, swaying surface. The five circus performers and dancers performing on it, along with a DJ, are forced to react to the slightest shifts in balance so they don’t fall off the stage. The instability of the floor serves as a metaphor for interpersonal relationships, the BAK adds. The piece explores the impossibility of finding in another person what one is actually seeking: oneself.
Moritz Schmid was in the area of
Industrial Design He was honored for his «Shell Within a Shell» collection as part of «Atelier Pfister — New Swiss Design.» His ingenious wardrobe, which has no front or back, is accessible from both sides, much like a clothes rack. It is encased in a lightweight fabric cover that, when opened, slides to the side like a rolled-up shirt sleeve, revealing the interior. The wardrobe serves both as a room divider and a storage space, helping to redefine the room’s layout in a novel way.
The young designer impressed with a men's collection
Fashion Designer Dominic Knecht. He designed this collection in 2009/10 as his bachelor’s thesis at the Basel Academy of Art and Design. Knecht creates his garments directly on the body by wrapping it with threads, strips of jersey fabric, and padded ribbons. Transparency is the common thread running through Knecht’s work. He aims to create garments that are easy to understand and explores garment volume, structures, and an understanding of the body. His unconventional collection is playful yet cool, its charm falling somewhere between a samurai and the Michelin Man.
Lukas Zimmermann was selected for a
Series of Posters awarded for the posters he created from 2003 to 2010. The BAK describes Zimmermann’s posters as revealing a process in which the graphic designer sought to express the importance of continuity in graphic design. Whether screen printing, digital printing, cardboard printing, or offset printing, he prints most of the posters himself. He prefers to experiment with hand-set type and stencils, all of which he prints in a single color. The graphic designer seeks a foundation upon which he can build a unity of typeface, image, and drawing. The result: an unmistakable visual style reminiscent of both the anarchism of the Paris «Atelier Populaire» in May 1968 and the «Zurich Movement» of the early 1980s.
Grand Prix Design Award WinnersThe
Susi and Ueli Berger, a couple of artists and designers is being honored with the 2010 Grand Prix Design for his comprehensive life’s work. With their sophisticated yet always functional furniture designs, they have made Swiss design history, as the BAK’s press release goes on to state. The Bergers were driven by the desire to design furniture according to their unconventional visions. With irony and imagination, as well as a keen sense of materials and forms, the two created objects such as the Soft Chair, the Cloud Lamp, and the rosewood drawer stack. Over the course of their nearly 40-year collaboration, Susi and Ueli Berger also worked in other areas of design and art—both through lively and intensive collaboration and through projects they undertook individually. Ueli Berger passed away in 2008. Susi Berger will accept the Federal Office of Culture’s award on behalf of both of them.
The
Swiss director Jean-Luc Godard has been awarded the 2010 Grand Prix Design by the Swiss Confederation. Through his avant-garde works, Godard has succeeded in creating a visual world that serves as an inspiration to an entire generation of artists, creators, designers, and critics across various fields. The award specifically honors Godard’s contributions to the field of design, the BAK adds. Characteristic of the director’s work are his explorations of visual quality and his multifaceted approach to various elements of design: the use of color, fashion, interior design, lighting design, typographic and graphic elements, the explicit use of sound in design, the relationship between language and image, as well as his experimental approach to and analysis of subjective perception.
The
Textile Designer Sonnhild Kestler, who has been creating textiles with the most intricate handiwork through her label S.K. Hand-Druck for over 20 years, is being honored with the Grand Prix Design for her work. Her products are distinguished by exquisite fabric quality as well as her characteristic color choices and designs. The designer’s motifs are inspired by the folklore of Eastern Europe, religious iconography from Southeast Asia, children’s books, and even the mundane aspects of everyday life. Her designs are created using a collage-like technique, in which individual visual elements are printed on paper and recombined in various ways until the desired atmosphere emerges. During the production process, the designer creates films, exposes screens, mixes colors, and stretches the fabric onto the printing table. These luxurious creations form the heart of the collection, which, together with terry cloth items, woven wool and cotton towels, and accessories, coalesces into a veritable Kestler universe.
The Swiss Confederation honors
Otto Künzli with the Grand Prix Design award for his work and for his teaching as
Professor and Head of the Jewelry Department at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. He is considered one of Europe’s most significant jewelry artists with significant international influence; his jewelry pieces are clear, minimalist, and often ambiguous. He subtly engages with cultural phenomena and succeeds in commenting on even radical statements regarding topics such as consumer behavior, the arbitrariness of values, power, vanity, and exploitation in his work in an ironic and playful manner. His works are included in many national and international jewelry collections. As a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, the BAK concluded, he is credited with the great achievement of having trained a number of renowned jewelry artists.
