Today, the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival, presented by AT&T, announced the participants of this year’s Tribeca Film Festival Artists Awards Program, sponsored by CHANEL. Curated by Alex Gartenfeld, Deputy Director and Chief Curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art Miami, the roster of contemporary artists participating in the fifteenth edition of the program include new contributors Keith Edmier, Marc Hundley, Zak Kitnick, John Miller, Virginia Overton, Laura Owens, Josh Tonsfeldt, and Sara VanDerBeek, as well as longtime supporters Stephen Hannock and Clifford Ross. Each artist has personally selected one of their original works that will be awarded to the winning filmmakers selected by the TFF jury at the fifteenth annual Festival, which will from April 13th to the 24th.

This striking collection will be featured in a free, public exhibition before being presented to the award-winning filmmakers from April 11th to the 23rd, between the hours of 9am- 6pm, at the Tribeca Festival Hub, located at 50 Varick Street in Manhattan. The Tribeca Festival Hub is Tribeca’s creative center and a gathering place for artists, thinkers, and storytellers, featuring ten days of immersive storytelling experiences, musical performances, and high profile talks. Programs, including virtual reality and interactive installations, can be accessed with a Festival Hub Pass, available for purchase here.

"When we first started Tribeca, I had no idea we were supposed to give out cash awards," said TFF co-founder and Tribeca Enterprises Executive Chair Jane Rosenthal. "And I can't bear those lucite plaques that are so ugly no one wants to keep them. The Artists Awards were all about art from one artist to another, and the importance of artists supporting each other’s work across disciplines. Over the past 15 years, we've been fortunate to partner with some of world's finest contemporary artists to award original work to the winning filmmakers. I’m proud to continue that tradition with these 10 artists.”

“The Tribeca Film Festival has a deep, decades-long commitment to excellence, to supporting emerging and established voices, and to the city itself,” said Artists Awards curator Alex Gartenfeld. “That dedication is reflected in the selection of artists for 2016, which also highlights the pervasive influence of new media, cinema and film on contemporary art production and images.”

The tradition of celebrating New York artists has been a part of the Tribeca Film Festival since its genesis. During the Festival’s first year, Rosenthal brought together an enviable array of downtown artists to establish the Artists Awards Program, which, year after year, shines a spotlight on an eclectic collection of both renowned and emerging visual artists, including sculptors like Daniel Arsham, photographers like Chuck Close, and painters like Kehinde Wiley, to name just a few. The program simultaneously celebrates Festival filmmakers by gifting original works of art by the selected artists to the Festival’s competition winners. Other past participants have included visionaries like Matthew Barney, Francesco Clemente, Anh Duong, Rachel Feinstein, Maurizio Galimberti, Nan Goldin, Ellsworth Kelly, Jeff Koons, Brice Marden, Yoko Ono, David Salle, Julian Schnabel, and Cindy Sherman, and Kara Walker, among many others.

Here is complete list of the artwork that will be contributed to this year's Artists Awards Program, many of which you can see for yourself in the above slideshow:

Keith Edmier: The Transit of Venus (Melanie), 2016, Diptych, 20 x 16 inches

Stephen Hannock: Waking up in the Painted World, 1996, Acrylic on Film Still, 11 x 14 inches.

Marc Hundley: It’s You and Me Kid, 2012, Xerox Print, 11 x 8.5 inches

Zak Kitnick: Untitled, 2015, Acrylic, ink and phosphorescent pigment on paper, 43.50 x 30.50 inches

John Miller: Untitled (11/30/96), 1996, C-Print, 11 x 14 inches

Virginia Overton: Untitled, 2014, Lithograph, 28 1/8 x 22 3/8 inches

Laura Owens: Untitled, 2010, Aquatint on blue gampi paper chine collé, 18 x 10 inches on 21 x 12.75 inch paper

Clifford Ross: Horizon XI, 2001, Silver-Gelatin print, 9 3/4 x 8 ¼ inches

Josh Tonsfeldt: Lenox Hill, 2015, Inkjet print on paper, 6 x 9 inches

Sara VanDerBeek: Temple of the Moon, 2014, Digital C-Print, 24 x 16.75 inches

About the Artists

Keith Edmier (b. 1967, Chicago, IL) is an American sculptor based in New York. His art blends pop culture and autobiographical references with site-specific geological and architectural histories. A master technician, Edmier’s sculpture ranges from marble and steel to casting techniques with tinted plastic resins, bronze, and volcanic basalt. Solo exhibitions of Edmier’s work have been presented at the Fans Hals Museum (Amsterdam) and at Hessel Museum of Art in (Annandale-on-Hudson, NY). His work has also been included in group exhibitions at Walker Art Center (Minneapolis, MN), New Orleans Museum of Art, Kunst-Werke (Berlin), Tate Modern, Kunsthalle Wien (Vienna), The Andy Warhol Museum (Pittsburgh, PA), LACMA, and the 2002 Whitney Biennial in New York. Currently, Edmier’s work can be found at the Tate Modern, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Israel Museum.

Stephen Hannock is an American Luminist painter known for his atmospheric nocturnes, which often incorporate text inscriptions that relate to family, friends, or the events of daily life. He has demonstrated a unique appreciation for contemporary storytelling through the painting medium. His inventive machine polishing of the surfaces of his paintings gives a characteristic luminous quality to his work. His design of visual effects for the 1998 film What Dreams May Come garnered him an Academy Award®. His works appear in collections worldwide, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, National Gallery of Art, and the Yale University Art Gallery. Hannock recently released The Last Ship from the River of the Northern City, his three-year collaboration with Sting using lyrics and Letterpress woodcuts.

Marc Hundley is a Canadian artist living and working in New York. Focused primarily on works on paper that assume the guises of various types of ephemera (band flyers, book inserts, band posters), Hundley’s practice examines the ways in which materials from popular culture, such as music, cinema and literature, retain the capacity to become deeply personal. In Hundley’s work, song lyrics, poetic stanzas, and film stills are isolated and printed on paper. These images always bare the date and location in which they were made as a means of memorializing the act of art making. Hundley is represented by Team Gallery in New York and has exhibited his work throughout Europe.

Zak Kitnick (b. 1984, Los Angeles, CA) lives and works in New York. Using a repetitive series of imagery and materials recalling the mass-produced advertising and packaging of consumer goods, Kitnick’s work reflects a quasi-industrial perspective on the utilitarian articles of economy. Solo exhibitions of his work have been held at the Mary Boone Gallery (New York), CLEARING (Brussels, Belgium), White Flag Projects (St. Louis, MO), Rowhouse Project (Baltimore, MD), Off Vendome (Düsseldorf, Germany), and Landings (Vestfossen, Norway). Recent group exhibitions include 173 E. 94th Street / Chaussée de Waterloo 550 at Middlemarch (Brussels, Belgium); To do as one would at David Zwirner (New York); Taster’s Choice at MoMA PS1 (New York); The Way You Remembered at Queens Museum (New York); and The Dogs are Barking at Artists Space (New York).

John Miller (b. 1954, Cleveland, OH) has both utilized and undermined the rigid strategies of conceptual art since the early 1980s. His work investigates the exchange between art and the everyday – and the absorption of each into the other. In addition to painting, drawing, sculpture, photography, and filmmaking, Miller teaches at Barnard College and plays in the artist band The Cornichons. This year ICA Miami will present the first major American survey of his work. Miller’s solo exhibitions have been presented at Museum Ludwig (Cologne), Kunsthalle Zürich, mamco (Geneva), Magasin Centre National d’Art Contemporain (Grenoble); and Kunstverein in Hamburg. He has participated in major group exhibitions at New Museum (New York), CAPC musée d’Art contemporain de Bordeaux, Reina Sofia (Madrid), and MoMA PS1 (New York). His work was included in the 1991 Whitney Biennial and the 2010 Gwangju Biennale. He lives in New York and Berlin.

Virginia Overton was born in Tennessee. She currently lives and works in New York. Solo exhibitions have been presented at White Cube, (London), ALL RISE (Seattle), Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami, Storm King Art Center (Mountainville), Westfälischer Kunstverein (Münster), Kunsthalle Bern, Mitchell-Innes & Nash (New York), The Kitchen (New York), The Power Station (Dallas), Freymond-Guth Fine Arts Ltd. (Zürich), and Dispatch (New York). She has been included in exhibitions at MoMA PS1, SculptureCenter, and White Columns in New York, and White Flag Projects and The Contemporary Art Museum in St. Louis, and is included in the collections at MoMA, MOCA Tucson, Kunstmuseum Bern, and Kunsthaus Zürich. She is currently working on a permanent installation for the main branch of the Columbus Metropolitan Library in Ohio, and a solo exhibition at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, Connecticut. Her first monograph was recently co-published by JRP/Ringier and Kunsthalle Bern.

Laura Owens (b. 1970, Euclid, OH) lives and works in Los Angeles. She studied at the Rhode Island School of Design, the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, and California Institute of the Arts. Owens’ paintings first attracted attention in the late 1990s, and by 2003 she became the youngest artist to be honored with a retrospective at The Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles. Most recently, Owens’ paintings and handmade artists’ books were exhibited at Capitain Petzel (Berlin), Secession (Vienna), and ZONA MACO (Mexico City). This spring her work will be on display at The Wattis Institute in San Francisco.

Clifford Ross is a multimedia artist who began his career as a painter and sculptor after graduating from Yale University in 1974. In the mid-1990s, Ross became interested in photography, and in 2002 he patented the revolutionary R1 camera, which allowed him to produce some of the most large-scale landscape photographs in the world. His work can be found at MoMA, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, J. Paul Getty Museum, Musée d’Art Moderne, and Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Past collaborations include “Harmonium Mountain I,” an animated video featuring an original score by Philip Glass, “Austin Wall,” a 28 x 28 foot stained glass wall, constructed with the architecture firm Mack Scogin Merrill Elam for the U.S. Federal Courthouse in Austin, Texas, and more recently an video installation with violinist Julian Rachlin at the 92nd Street Y. A major survey of Ross's work is currently on view at MASS MoCA.

Josh Tonsfeldt (b. 1979, Independence, MO) lives and works in Brooklyn. Tonsfeldt’s solo exhibitions have been presented at Rowhouse Project (Baltimore, MD), Galerie VidalCuglietta (Brussels), and Simon Preston Gallery (New York). Recent group exhibitions include Artists’ Choice: An Expanded Field of Photography at MASS MoCA; Part Picture at Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art (Toronto); No Games Inside the Labyrinth at Galerie Barbara Weiss (Berlin); and Mississippi at GAMeC (Bergamo).

Sara VanDerBeek (b. 1976, Baltimore) graduated from Cooper Union in 1998. Her practice, which includes photography, sculpture, assemblage, and interdisciplinary works, approaches the breadth of civilization with an intimate immediacy. Whether created in her studio or in urban areas that have undergone dramatic transformation, her compositions frame the contemporary world within the continuum of history. VanDerBeek’s solo exhibitions have been presented at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen (Rotterdam), The Baltimore Museum of Art, Hammer Museum (Los Angeles), Whitney Museum of American Art (New York), Fondazione Memmo in Rome, and Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland. Her work has been included as part of group shows at The Deutsche Bank KunstHalle (Berlin), The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum New York, Walker Art Center (Minneapolis, MN), The Morgan Library & Museum (New York), MOCA Cleveland, The Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, and the MoMA.

About the Curator

Alex Gartenfeld is the founding Deputy Director and Chief Curator at Institute of Contemporary, Miami, where he oversees the museum’s exhibitions, public programs and education. He has organized solo exhibitions for Alex Bag, Shannon Ebner, John Miller, Virginia Overton, Pedro Reyes, Ryan Sullivan and Andra Ursuta, among others. Forthcoming are monographic exhibitions for Ida Applebroog, Thomas Bayrle, Renaud Jerez and Laura Lima. In 2018 he will co-organize the New Museum Triennial.

About the Tribeca Film Festival

The Tribeca Film Festival, now in its 15th year, brings together visionaries across industries and diverse audiences to celebrate the power of storytelling. A platform for independent filmmaking, creative expression and immersive entertainment, Tribeca supports emerging and established voices, discovers award-winning filmmakers, curates innovative and interactive experiences, and introduces new technology and ideas through panels, premieres, exhibitions, and live performance.

Founded by Robert De Niro, Jane Rosenthal and Craig Hatkoff in 2001 following the attacks on the World Trade Center, Tribeca has evolved from an annual event to spur the economic and cultural revitalization of lower Manhattan to a gathering place for filmmakers, artists, innovators, and the global creative community. Through programs that embrace storytelling in all of its expansive forms – from film and music, to video games and online work, TFF reimagines the cinematic experience and explores how art can unite communities.

About CHANEL

CHANEL, the international luxury goods company, was founded in France by Gabrielle Chanel at the beginning of the last century. The company, which is privately held, offers a broad range of luxury products, including Ready-to-Wear, fragrance, cosmetics, leathergoods, accessories, fine jewelry and watches, through a U.S. network of 24 boutiques and approximately 91 locations at select retailers. CHANEL is also renowned for its Haute Couture collections presented in Paris. CHANEL maintains 190 fashion boutiques worldwide, including the legendary House of CHANEL on rue Cambon in Paris. Under the creative guidance of designer Karl Lagerfeld, the House of CHANEL remains dedicated to luxury, fashion, style and image.

CHANEL opened its very first watch boutique avenue Montaigne in 1987 for the launch of the Première watch. The boutique was then transferred to place Vendôme in 1990, displaying also from 1993 the new CHANEL Fine Jewelry creations. Since 1997, the flagship Watch and Fine Jewelry boutique sits at 18, place Vendôme. There are 12 boutiques featuring fine jewelry collections in the U.S. and 52 Watch and Fine Jewelry boutiques worldwide.

About the 2016 Sponsors

As Presenting Sponsor of the Tribeca Film Festival, AT&T is committed to supporting the Festival and the art of filmmaking through access and innovation – aiming to make this the most interactive film and storytelling festival in the country, where visitors experience the Festival in ways they never imagined. As one of the largest communications and entertainment companies, AT&T helps millions connect with entertainment, mobile, high speed Internet and voice services – virtually everywhere.

The Tribeca Film Festival is pleased to announce its Signature Sponsors: #ActuallySheCan by Allergan, Accenture, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Bai Beverages, Bira 91, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Borough of Manhattan Community College (BMCC), CHANEL, DEAN & DELUCA, EFFEN® Vodka, ESPN, Hendrick’s Gin, IBM, Infor, IWC Schaffhausen, The Lincoln Motor Company, NBC 4 New York, National CineMedia, New York Magazine, Nexxus New York Salon, Samsung, Spring Studios New York, Thompson Hotels, and United Airlines.