April 4th, 2017

MEDIA ALERT

NEW YORK, NY– April 4, 2017– The Tribeca Film Festival has unveiled the participants for the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival Artists Awards Program, sponsored by CHANEL. The roster of contemporary artists participating in the 16th edition of the Festival include Urs Fischer, Walton Ford, John Giorno, Ella Kruglyanskaya, Jorge Pardo, R.H. Quaytman, Sterling Ruby, Aurel Schmidt, Ryan Sullivan, as well as longtime supporter Stephen Hannock. These artists each participate in the Festival by donating a piece of their art to be given as an award to the winning filmmakers. The tradition of artists supporting each other has been intrinsic to the Tribeca Film Festival since its inception, when Festival co-founder Jane Rosenthal brought together downtown creatives for the first Artists Awards program.

The participating artists were curated by the Festival along with Alex Gartenfeld, Deputy Director and Chief Curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art Miami. Each artist has personally selected one of their original work to be awarded to the winning filmmakers selected by the Festival jury at the 16th annual Tribeca Film Festival. The nine artists join an illustrious group of over 125 past participants including Matthew Barney, Francesco Clemente, Chuck Close, Eric Fischl, Walton Ford, Nan Goldin, April Gornik, Jeff Koons, David Salle, Julian Schnabel, Cindy Sherman, Kiki Smith, Dustin Yellin, and JR. [Full alumni list: http://bit.ly/ArtistAwardsAlumni].

The collection will be featured in a free, public exhibition before being presented to the award-winning filmmakers from April 17 - 30, at the Tribeca Festival Hub, 50 Varick Street, Manhattan. The 2017 Tribeca Film Festival will run April 19-30.

Following is a complete list of the artwork that will be contributed. Artwork images can be found here: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/00i39pn5z2tbpwc/AABS88UBgvH0U1Wzf2c7KLuSa?dl=0

• Urs Fischer: boomboomboom, 2016, The Transit of Venus (Melanie), 2016, Aluminum, Epoxy, Steel, Acrylic Primer, Gesso, Acrylic Ink, Acrylic Silkscreen Medium, Acrylic Paint, 27 ⅞ x 52 ½ inches
  Audience Award: Documentary
• Walton Ford: Study for La Brea, 2017, Watercolor, gouache and ink on paper, 14 x 11 ¼ inches
  Best Narrative Feature (World)
• John Giorno: GOD IS MANMADE, 2017, Watercolor on paper, 29 ½ x 29 ⅘ inches
  Albert Maysles New Documentary Director
• Stephen Hannock: Study: Flooded Oxbow for Ophelia (MM#38), 2017, Charcoal over digital print on paper with collaged images by: Chuck Close, Gregory Crewdson, Stephen Hannock, 7 x 11 inches
  Best Narrative Short
• Ella Kruglyanskaya: Untitled, 2014, 5-Color Screenprint, 13 ¾ x 22 ¼ inches
  Founder’s Award for Best Narrative Feature
• Jorge Pardo: Veridical, 2015, Silkscreen on Paper, FRAMED: 15 ⅛ x 17 ¾ inches
  Best New Narrative Director
• R.H. Quaytman: Delphi Landscape, 2017, Gold leaf, silkscreen ink and gesso on wood, 20 x 12 3/8 x 3/4 inches (50.8 x 31.4 x 1.9 cm)
  Audience Award: Narrative
• Sterling Ruby: The Reaper, 2015, Embossed and signed poster, 26 ¾ x 20 ¾ inches
  Best Documentary Feature (World/Domestic)
• Aurel Schmidt: Fashion voodoo 3, 2016, Mixed Media on Paper, 21.5 x 15 inches
  NORA Ephron Prize
• Ryan Sullivan: Untitled, 2016, Oil on Paper, 42 ¼ x 30 inches
  Best Documentary Short

About the Artists
Urs Fischer (b. 1972, Zürich, Switzerland) Urs Fischer was born in 1973 in Zürich, Switzerland. He studied at the Delfina Studio Trust, London; Visited de Ateliers, Amsterdam; and Schule für Gestaltung, Zürich. Fischer's work is included in many important public and private collections worldwide. Recent selected solo exhibitions include "Marguerite de Ponty," New Museum, New York (2009–10); "Oscar the Grouch," Brant Foundation Art Study Center, Connecticut (2010–11); "Skinny Sunrise," Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna (2013); "Madame Fisscher," Palazzo Grassi, Venice (2013); Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2013); "YES," DESTE Project Space Slaughterhouse, Greece (2013); "Untitled," Lever House Art Collection, New York (2014); "Small Axe," Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow (2016); and "Mon cher…," Fondation Vincent Van Gogh, France (2016). Fischer's work was included in the 2003, 2007, and 2011 editions of the Biennale di Venezia. Fischer currently lives and works in New York.

Walton Ford (b. 1960, Larchmont, New York) Walton Ford's monumental watercolors expand the visual language and narrative scope of traditional natural history painting, meditating on the often violent and bizarre moments at the intersection of human culture and the natural world. Although human figures rarely appear in his paintings, their presence is always implied. Ford's work is included in a number of private and public collections, including the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Whitney Museum of American Art. A survey of Ford's work was organized by the Brooklyn Museum in New York in 2006 and traveled to the San Antonio Museum of Art in Texas and the Norton Museum of Art in Florida in 2007. In 2010-2011, Ford's midcareer retrospective traveled from the Hamburger Bahnhof Museum Fur Gegenwart in Berlin, to the Albertina in Vienna and to the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark. His most recent solo show was at the Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature in Paris, 2015-2016. Taschen books has issued three editions of his large-format monograph, Pancha Tantra.

John Giorno (b. 1936, New York) John Giorno has exhibited widely in museums internationally. Most recently, John Giorno has exhibited at Vienna Seccession, MoMA, New York, Artist Space, New York and Centre d'art contemporain, Metz, FR. His retrospective, I ♥ John Giorno, created by Ugo Rondinone debuted at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris in 2015, and will shortly begin a multi-city tour.

Stephen Hannock (b. 1951, Albany, New York) Stephen Hannock is an American luminist painter known for his atmospheric landscapes and incendiary nocturnes. The artist has demonstrated a keen appreciation for the quality of light and for the limitations of conventional techniques for capturing it. His experiments with machine-polishing the surfaces of his paintings give a trademark luminous quality to his work. The larger vistas also incorporate diaristic text that weaves throughout the composition. His design of visual effects for the 1998 film What Dreams May Come won an Academy Award. His works are in collections worldwide, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Whitney, The Yale Art Gallery, and The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego. Currently he is working on a fine art letterpress book with Sting. Hannock is contributing eight woodcuts that will accompany the lyrics to several songs from The Soul Cages and The Last Ship albums.

Ella Kruglyanskaya (b. 1978, Riga, Latvia) Ella Kruglyanskaya was born in 1978 in Riga, Latvia. She immigrated to the U.S. in 1995. Earning her B.F.A in Painting at the Cooper Union in New York, she went on to complete her M.F.A at the Yale School of Art in New Haven, CT. Recent solo exhibitions include Vanitas, Gavin Brown's enterprise, Rome, Italy; Ella Kruglyanskaya, Tate Liverpool, Liverpool and Tramway, Glasgow, U.K., Fancy Problems, Thomas Dane Gallery, London, U.K; How to Work Together, Studio Voltaire, London, U.K. and Woman! Painting! Woman! Gavin Brown's enterprise, New York, NY. Select group exhibitions include Unrealism, Miami, FL., The Extreme Present, Aishti Foundation, Beirut, Lebanon, Everything Falls Faster than an Anvil, Pace, London, U.K., Notes on Neo-Camp, Office Baroque and Studio Voltaire. She currently lives and works in New York City.

Jorge Pardo (b. 1963, Havana, Cuba) Jorge Pardo was born in Havana, Cuba in 1963 and studied at the University of Illinois, Chicago and received his BFA from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. Pardo's artwork explores the intersection of contemporary painting, design, sculpture, and architecture. Employing a broad palette of vibrant colors, eclectic patterns, and natural and industrial materials, Pardo's works range from murals to home furnishings to collages to larger-than-life fabrications. He often transforms familiar objects into artworks with multiple meanings and purposes, such as a set of lamps displayed as both sources of illumination and as freestanding sculptures, or a sailboat exhibited as both a utilitarian, seaworthy vessel and as a striking obelisk. Working on small and monumental scales, Pardo also treats entire public spaces as vast canvases. Pardo engages viewers with works that produce great visual delight while questioning distinctions between fine art and design. His work has been the subject of solo exhibitions including David Gill Gallery, London (2015) neugerriemschneider, Berlin (2014); Petzel Gallery, New York (2014); Gagosian Gallery, New York (2010); Gallery Gisela Capitain, Cologne (2012); Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2010); K21 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf (2009); Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2008); and Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami (2007). His work is part of numerous public collections including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Tate Modern, London. Jorge Pardo has been the recipient of many awards including the MacArthur Fellowship Award (2010); the Smithsonian American Art Museum Lucelia Artist Award (2001); the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award (1995). Jorge Pardo currently lives and works in Merida, Mexico. For more information on his work and to view his biography, please visit www.petzel.com.

R.H. Quaytman (b. 1961, Boston, Massachusetts) R. H. Quaytman was born in Boston in 1961, studied at Bard College and at the Institut des Hautes Études en Arts Plastiques in Paris, and received the Rome Prize Fellowship from the American Academy in in 2001. Quaytman approaches painting as if it were poetry: when reading a poem, one notices particular words, and how each is not just that one word, but other words as well. Quaytman's paintings, organized into chapters structured in the form of a book, have a grammar, a syntax and a vocabulary. While the work is bound by a rigid structure on a material level — appearing only on beveled plywood panels in eight predetermined sizes derived from the golden ratio — open-ended content creates permutations that result in an archive without end. Her practice engages three distinct stylistic modes: photo-based silkscreens, optical patterns such as moiré and scintillating grids and small hand-painted oil works. Each chapter is developed in relation to a specific exhibition opportunity, and consequently, each work is iconographically bound to its initial site of presentation. In 2015, Quaytman was awarded the Wolfgang Hahn Prize with Michael Krebber. Quaytman has taught at Bard College since 2006, in addition to lecturing at Princeton University, Cooper Union, Columbia University, and the Yale University School of Art. In 2005, she co-founded Orchard, a cooperatively run exhibition and event space that concluded its three-year run on the Lower East Side in 2008. Her work is held in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Tate Modern, the Museo Reina Sofia, the CCS Bard Gallery and Hessel Museum of Art, the Baltimore Museum of Art and the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, among others. Her work was featured in the 54th Venice Biennale and the 2010 Whitney Biennial, and solo shows of her work have taken place at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2016), Museum of Contemporary Art (2015), the Renaissance Society (Chicago, 2013), the Museum Abteiberg (Mönchengladbach, 2012), Gladstone Gallery (Brussels, 2012), the Kunsthalle Basel (2011), Galerie Buchholz (Cologne, 2011), the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2010), the Institute of Contemporary Art Boston (2009) and the Miguel Abreu Gallery (2008).

Sterling Ruby (b. 1972, Bitburg, Germany) Sterling Ruby is known for his use of a wide range of aesthetic and material strategies, from sculptures made of saturated, glossy, poured polyurethane, bronze and steel, to drawings, collages, richly glazed ceramics, spray-paint paintings, photography and video, as well as textile works that include quilts, tapestries and large stuffed soft sculptures. Ruby has exhibited at institutions including the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Drawing Center, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature, Paris, France; FRAC Champagne-Ardenne, Reims, France, Centre d'Art Contemporain, Geneva, Switzerland; and Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm, Sweden and Museo d'Arte Contemporanea, Rome, Italy; Garage Centre for Contemporary Culture, Moscow and MACRO, Rome. In 2014, Ruby exhibited at the Taipei Biennial, the Gwangju Biennial, and the Whitney Biennial. His work was included in the biennial MADE IN L.A. 2016 at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, and he was the subject of a solo exhibition at the Winterpalais, Belvedere Museum, Vienna, Austria in 2016. The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA will present the recently acquired SOFT WORK installation in April 2017.

Aurel Schmidt (b. 1982, Kamloops, BC, Canada) Aurel Schmidt is an artist known both for the technically adept execution and autobiographical frankness of her drawings. Pieced together using individual parts of the physical and emotional detritus of our world, Schmidt painstakingly constructs an intricate tableau that serves as a momento mori to our own vulnerability and mortality. Schmidt was included in the 2010 Whitney Biennial and has produced three of her own solo exhibitions, 'Fruits' which took place in an abandoned deli, NY ; 'New Gods' NY and Venice Italy, her first solo exhibition was at at Deitch Projects in New York. Notable group exhibitions include those at Saatchi Gallery, London; Deste Foundation Centre For Contemporary Art ; Garage Center of Contemporary Culture, Moscow & Romeo Gallery NYC. Schmidt's next solo exhibition will take place at P.P.O.W. Gallery in September

Ryan Sullivan (b. 1983, New York) New York-based painter Ryan Sullivan was born in 1983 and received his Bachelor of Fine arts from the Rhode Island School of Design. In his paintings, Sullivan tempers gesture and authorship through an entropic set of actions. Sullivan's thickly applied canvases summon the materiality and alchemy inherent to paint. Laying his canvases horizontally, the artist adds layers of latex, oil, and enamel to create pooled pockets that slowly coagulate into unanticipated leathery skins and puckered flesh. Lifting the half-dry canvas, Sullivan subjects the paint to gravity, concurrently dumping out some under-painting while activating other layers beneath: with this gesture, the artist relinquishes partial authorial control. His newest suite of paintings elucidates the more figurative quality of Sullivan's practice via resin casts. The works are created through a diachronic process wherein quickly ossifying pigmented resins are applied via pours and brushstrokes to rubber-silicon molds. The resultant image is a record of both the artist's hand and the temporal process of their creation. These works explore both the formal impact of the three-dimensional object and the tension between abstract and figurative two-dimensional image. The artist's work has been exhibited internationally at venues such as Kunstmuseum Bonn, Germany; Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome; Hydra's Workshop, Hydra, Greece; White Flag Projects, St. Louis; and MoMA PS1, New York. His work is held in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; and the University of Chicago.

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