Sara Cwynar Toucan in Nature (Post it notes) 2013 Chromogenic print 76.2 cm x 101.6 cm Courtesy the artist and Cooper Cole
Three emerging Canadian artists have won Charles Pachter Prizes.
Brooklyn-based photographer Sara Cwynar, Montreal-based installation artist Mathieu Grenier, and Vancouver-based multidisciplinary artist Erdem Tasdelen each receive $5,000.
Cwynar holds a bachelor’s in design from Toronto’s York University and is known for photographs that often involve elaborate arrangements of found material to provoke reflections on the nature of photography as medium. She has recently published the book Kitsch Encyclopedia through Blonde Art Books.
Grenier‘s installations also reflect on the medium of art, albeit in a different way. For a recent Galerie Trois Points exhibition held in collaboration with the Musée d’art de Joliette, he cut holes in the wall where paintings by Ozias Leduc, Paul-Émile Borduas, Rita Letendre, Paterson Ewen and other iconic Canadian artists might have hung; Grenier then hung the monochromatic drywall cuts on their own as well, as a trace of these histories and spaces. He holds a BA in visual and media arts from UQAM.
Taşdelen grew up in Switzerland, Germany and Turkey before settling in Vancouver, where he earned an MA in visual arts from the Emily Carr University of Art and Design. His work—such as Worrier, which documents five therapy sessions with a psychotherapist over the course of two months to resolve anxieties about being an artist—often reflects humorously on self-expression and culture.
The prizes were announced by the Hnatyshyn Foundation on September 23. The year of 2014 marks the third and final year of the $5,000 prizes initiated by senior visual artist and historian Charles Pachter and intended to “nurture emerging talent” in the visual arts in Canada.
Starting next year for a period of three years, the prizes will be renamed the William and Meredith Saunderson Prizes for Emerging Canadian Artists.
This article was corrected on September 30, 2014. The original copy indicated that Grenier’s project took place at the Musée d’art de Joliette. In fact, it took place at Galerie Trois Points and was created in collaboration with Musée d’art de Joliette.
