THE HAGUE.- Anri Sala is the winner of the Vincent Award 2014. The news has just been announced at an award show held in the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague (Netherlands). According to Benno Tempel, chairman of the international jury, Anri Sala succeeded the best in creating an installation where the viewer is constantly challenged by image, sound and movement. “It is a poetic and at the same time conceptual work. He presents the idea of gone ideologies and the possibilities this creates for the future on an individual level.” Anri Sala will receive € 50,000 in prize money, to be used as he sees fit. The work he created for the Vincent Award 2014 exhibition will remain on show at The Hague’s GEM Museum of Contemporary Art until 1 February 2015. Elsewhere, his work is currently on show at the Haus der Kunst in Munich (Germany).The Vincent Award is one of Europe’s foremost contemporary art prizes, second only to the UK’s Turner Prize.

Anri Sala (b. 1974, Tirana, Albania) is interested in turning points in history: moments that upset the status quo and produce a new order. He sees such moments as providing the scope for new opportunities. Sala’s early works refer to his personal experience of social and political change in Albania following the collapse of the Communist regime in 1991. History, memory and change continue to be recurrent themes in his more recent work. Sala works mainly with film and video.

The Vincent Award 2014: Le Clash and Tlatelolco Clash
For the Vincent Award 2014, Sala combined three works to create a single installation. His films ‘Le Clash’ and ‘Tlatelolco Clash’ transport the viewer to a derelict Modernist arts venue and to spots in the vicinity of the Plaza of Three Cultures in Tlatelolco (Mexico City) – places he sees as symbolizing the failure of a ‘Great Ideology’.

These images are accompanied by various renditions of punk band The Clash’s renowned ‘Should I stay or should I go?’ track. In ‘Le Clash’, the song becomes a flowing melody played alternately on a barrel organ and a music box, whereas in ‘Tlatelolco Clash’ it reappears in fragmentary form as different players insert separate sheets of perforated music into a barrel organ. Each player cranks the barrel organ at his own rhythm and speed, creating varying interpretations of the tune. The two films are linked by a third work called ‘Doldrum’ (a reference to the windless area of the Atlantic known as the Doldrums, where sailing ships could be becalmed for days or weeks at a time). In this work, a drum plays automatically in response to inaudible, low-frequency sounds on the soundtracks of the films.

The Vincent Award 2014
The shortlist for the Vincent Award 2014 comprised Pierre Huyghe (France), Manfred Pernice (Germany), Willem de Rooij (Netherlands), Anri Sala (Albania/ France) and Gillian Wearing (United Kingdom). The Vincent Award is among the world’s foremost contemporary art prizes. It is designed to spur on a mid-career artist whose work is having a major influence on the development of contemporary art. The winner receives €50,000 prize money: an amount comparable to that associated with the Turner Prize. Previous winners were Deimantas Narkevičius, Wilhelm Sasnal, Pawel Althamer, Neo Rauch and Eija-Liisa Ahtila.

The Vincent Award was launched by the Broere Foundation in 2000 in memory of Monique Zajfen, a beloved friend of the Broere family and former holder of Galerie 121 in Antwerp. It was her commitment to and passion for contemporary art that inspired this move to draw attention to European artists of great talent. The Vincent Award is intended both to encourage European talent and to promote communication in a free, united and peaceful Europe.

Anri Sala (b. 1974, Tirana, Albania) lives and works in Berlin. He studied painting at the Académie Nationale des Arts in Tirana, video art at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, and film at Le Fresnoy - Studio National des Arts Contemporains in Tourcoing. In 2001 he won the Young Artist Prize at the Venice Biennale and in 2011 the Absolut Art Award. Sala has had many solo exhibitions in recent years. Venues have included the Serpentine Gallery in London (2011), the Japanese National Museum of Art in Osaka (2011), the Museum of Contemporary Art in Detroit (2012), the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin (2012) and Palazzo Grassi Teatrino at the Venice Biennale (2013).

The jury
The artists were shortlisted by a jury of European experts comprising: Benno Tempel, Director, Gemeentemuseum (chairman); Stephan Berg, Director, Kunstmuseum Bonn; Isabel Carlos, Director, Centro del Art Moderna, Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon; Anda Rottenberg, independent art critic and curator; Anita Zabludowicz, co-founder, Zabludowicz Collection, London, New York and Sarvisalo. The jury selected the nominees from a longlist of artists proposed by experts drawn from the European contemporary art world: Fabio Cavallucci, Director, Centre for Contemporary Art, Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw; Adam Szymczyk, Artistic Director, Documenta 14; Nataša Petrešin Bachelez, independent curator; Mirjam Varadinis, curator, Kunsthaus Zürich; Holger Liebs, editor-in-chief, Monopol Magazin für Kunst und Leben; Tom Morton, independent curator, London; WHW (What, How & for Whom) curatorial collective of Zagreb; Xander Karskens, curator, De Hallen, Haarlem; and Nicolaus Schafhausen, Director, Kunsthalle Wien.