American artist Lisa Oppenheim has won a public vote to receive the 2014 Aimia | AGO Photography Prize. The prize, which consists of a $50,000 award as well as a six-week Canadian residency, was announced at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto this evening.
Runners-up are Chicago-based Canadian artist David Hartt, LA-based American-Israeli artist Elad Lassry, and Johannesburg-based South African artist Nandipha Mntambo. Each runner-up also receives a six-week residency as well as $5,000 to support their artistic practices.
Lisa Oppenheim was born in 1975 in New York City, where she lives and works. Oppenheim’s photographs and videos are composed of images and materials from the past that she re-processes and transforms through various historical and contemporary techniques. Her process often begins online, where she sources images and objects that she reinterprets photographically using both analog and digital technologies.
For instance, in her works currently on view at the AGO’s related prize exhibition, Oppenheim began by downloading images of volcanic eruptions and industrial pollution from an amateur stock-video site. She output the videos to 35mm motion picture film and used the negatives to make prints that she then scanned to make a video titled Smoke. Oppenheim also exposed her photographic prints using the light of an open flame. This process creates a dramatic solarized effect: reversing light and dark, thereby linking the subject matter of the photograph with the process of its making.
Oppenheim also employs unusual materials as negatives—fabric, lace, slices of wood—directly recording the objects’ specific textures to create near-abstract compositions.
Previous winners of this prize include Canada’s Erin Shirreff (2013), Jo Longhurst of the UK (2012), Gauri Gill of India (2011), Canada’s Kristan Horton (2010), Marco Antonio Cruz of Mexico (2009) and Canada’s Sarah Anne Johnson (2008).
