Serena Ferrario

7th Horst Janssen Graphic Art Prize of the Claus Hüppe Foundation

 

press_release_serena_ferrario.pdf

With the exhibition Where the Drawings Live, the Hamburger Kunsthalle is presenting an expansive multimedia installation of graphic works, collages and films by the artist Serena Ferrario (b. 1986), who recently received the prestigious Horst Janssen Graphic Art Prize by the Claus Hüppe Foundation at  the Kunsthalle. Ferrario is the seventh winner of the most generously endowed award for artists working in the field of drawing, print/computer graphics or photography, which comes with a grant of 20,000 euros. Thanks to a number of important exhibitions in recent years, the Hamburger Kunsthalle has become a central venue for contemporary graphic art.
 
Serena Ferrario incorporates various forms of graphic design in her highly complex installations, including drawings, prints, collages, silhouettes and photographs, supplementing them with film footage and found objects to create story-like, poetic scenarios. Her drawn and printed figures and elements in black, white and shades of grey detach themselves from the plane to occupy space, replicating themselves so that they can reappear in different constellations. The artist draws in her work on her own biographical, cultural and social experiences and observations made growing up in Italy, Romania and Germany, with her personal memories and identity in relation to her family’s history of migration playing an important role in her art.
 
Ferrario regards her exhibition in the Harzen Cabinet at the Hamburger Kunsthalle as an open process that not only provides glimpses of her studio work but above all reveals connections between the different media. Her prints are thus not simply framed and hung on the wall but embedded in stage-like scenery, allowing her to create her very own cosmos of characters that react to and relate to one another. The artist refers to these figures as »personalities« that appear and »live« in the exhibition space, at eye level with the audience. As it documents the various facets of Ferrario’s work, the show also explicitly takes a look behind the scenes at Where the Drawings Live, with the artist questioning her own work in the studio, how it is presented in public space and the reactions of viewers.
 
Serena Ferrario was born in Crema near Milan in 1986. She lives and works in Germany, Italy and Romania. From 2010 to 2017 she studied at Braunschweig University of Art with teachers including Wolfgang Ellenrieder, Isa Melsheimer and Nadine Fecht. She received a Diplom degree with distinction in 2016 and was ap-pointed master student in 2017. Since then, Ferrario has received several fellowships and awards, most recently the Karl Schmidt-Rottluff Scholarship in 2018.
 
The Horst Janssen Graphic Art Prize of the Claus Hüppe Foundation has been awarded every three years since 2003. The award ceremony was previously held at the Horst Janssen Museum in Oldenburg, which is dedicated to the German draughtsman, graphic artist, author, poster artist, illustrator and photographer Horst Janssen (1929–1995). But now the Claus Hüppe Foundation has “»ent the award on tour« and presented it for the first time in spring 2021 in Hamburg, where Horst Janssen lived and worked, hosted by the Hamburger Kunsthalle. The Kunsthalle houses the world’s largest collection of Horst Janssen’s works.
The Graphic Art Prize is dedicated to discovering and promoting young artists and new positions in the field of graphic art in cooperation with German universities and academies. This year’s jury, comprising Dr. Jenny Graser (Staatliche Museen zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Museum of Prints and Drawings), Dr. Matthias Mühling (Lenbachhaus Munich), Dr. Petra Roettig and Dr. Andreas Stolzenburg (Hamburger Kunsthalle), and Rik Reinking (WAI Woods Art Institute, Wentorf near Hamburg), unanimously chose Serena Ferrario as winner. The artist was nominated by Nadine Fecht (formerly a professor at Braunschweig University of Art). In its statement, the jury praised Ferrario’s sensitive powers of observation, calling her »an artist of a global age who has succeeded in developing a contemporary visual language all her own in which different media are meaningfully interlinked and cross-fertilise one another«.
 
In addition to an exhibition, the Graphic Art Prize also provides for a publication. The catalogue is being published by KERBER-Verlag (German/English, 120 pages) as an artist’s book featuring numerous illustrations of the work and studio process, film stills as well as an interview with Serena Ferrario and essays by Leona Marie Ahrens and Alexandra Wach. The publication is available in the museum shop (20 €) or online at www.freunde-der-kunsthalle.de