Romanian artist wins 2017 Guerlain Drawing Prize

Romanian artist Ciprian Muresan won this year’s Daniel & Florence Guerlain Contemporary Art Foundation prize. He was nominated for this 10th edition of the prize alongside Scottish artist Charles Avery and Frenchman Didier Trenet. The Guerlain Drawing Prize is awarded to artists using graphics as their main vehicle of expression, although forms such as collage and murals may be included. The winner receives an award of EUR 15,000, while the two runners-up each receive an award of EUR 5,000. At the same time, a work by the winner is donated by the Guerlain Foundation to the Prints and Drawings Department at the Musée National d’Art Moderne-Centre Pompidou. A representative of the Cluj School, with which painter Adrian Ghenie is also associated, Ciprian Muresan was born in 1977 in Dej, a city in North-Western Romania. He graduated from the Fine Arts Academy in Cluj-Napoca, the city where he works and lives. His work has been shown at the Viennese Secession and the NBK, in the Centre Pompidou, in the Witte de With, in the New Museum, and in the Romanian Pavilion of the 53rd Venice Biennial. He is present in numerous collections: the Taylor Collection, Cabinet d’Art Graphique of the MNAM-Centre Pompidou, and the Florence & Daniel Guerlain collection. “In his often dark and ironic works, the artist evokes the realities of present day in Romania, the end of communism, the fascination of Western countries. But his work is in keeping with a more global reflection on the contemporary world marked by the end of Utopias, the uniformization of thought and a globalized culture,” according to a presentation of the artist on the Guerlain Foundation website. Muresan is represented by the Galleries Plan B, Cluj-Berlin; David Nolan, New York; Eric Hussenot, Paris; Andreiana Mihail Gallery, Bucharest; Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles; and Wilkinson, London. Previous winners of the Drawing Prize are: Silvia Bächli, Sandra Vásquez de la Horra, Catharina Van Eetvelde, Marcel Van Eeden, Jorinde Voigt, Susan Hefuna, Tomasz Kowalski, Jockum Nordström, and Cameron Jamie. editor@romania-insider.com (Photo source: Salon du dessin Facebook Page)