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Carlos Sáez wins the Col·lecció Cañada Blanch Award 2020 with a work entitled ARM, proposed by the Espai Tactel Gallery. The Cañada Blanch Foundation’s Chairman, Juan Viña, has delivered the €7000 award during the presentation ceremony of the online exhibition at the Universitat de València’s Cultural Centre, La Nau.
The award-winning work of Carlos Sáez is a mechanical arm which has been highlighted by the jury due to its audacity, the plastic expression in the border area of aesthetic exploration and transhumanism. This work is a tribute to a neglected technological device treated as a relic. According to Ricard Silvestre, curator of the exhibition, the work selected this year “is in the line of the previous acquisitions of the Cañada Blanch Foundation and tries to avoid plastic and pictorial perspective”.
Once again, the jury is responsible for deliberation. This year, it is composed of renowned experts in the field and members of the organising institutions, such as: José María Lasalle, former Secretary of State for Culture; Alba Braza, exhibition curator; Luisa Espino, art critic; Juan Viña, chairman of the Cañada Blanch Foundation; Paula Sánchez, director of the Cañada Blanch Foundation; Manel Costa, member of the Board of Trustees of Cañada Blanch Foundation, and Norberto Piqueras, in charge of exhibitions at the Cultural Centre La Nau of the Universitat de València.
The set of pieces has been announced during the exhibition’s presentation ceremony, which this year, due to the pandemic, will have an online format. You can visit the exhibition through this link.
The 17 Valencian galleries that are participating this year with pictorial, sculptural, photographic and audiovisual works are: Thema Art Gallery, La Mercería, Espai Nivi Collblanch, Aural Art Gallery, Vangar Art Gallery, Espai Tàctel, Alba Cabrera Art Contemporani, Shiras Art Gallery, Luis Adelantado, The Blink Project, SET Espai d’Art, Punto Art Gallery, Cànem Art Gallery, Rosa Santos, Cuatro Art Gallery, ISABEL BILBAO Art Gallery and Benlliure Art Gallery.
Among the 17 art galleries, ARM, Carlos Sáez’s work, has been awarded with the 2020 Col·lecció Cañada Blanch Award and now will become part of the foundation’s collection. This award is one of the main acknowledgements within the Valencian contemporary art sector and aims to promote artists and galleries in the Valencian Community, to stimulate contemporary art and critical thought.
Under the title L’altra condició (The other condition), the exhibit proposal resulting from the 2020 Col·lecció Cañada Blanch Award reflects on the notion of space. Professor Ricard Silvestre from Universitat de València will be the curator of the exhibition for the second time in a row, an exhibition which displays the continuity of the previous one. Whereas in 2019 artists delved into temporality and the temporary nature of art, space takes centre stage in this year’s edition. Both space and time are positioned as key elements in artistic creation.
The 17 works, gathered in this seventh edition under the notion of space, demonstrate the dream of building a personal space of reflection, comprehension and enjoyment through art. A whole range of possibilities that open up in the other condition mentioned in the exhibition’s title, a condition outside an inert space that shapes a reality and shapes us as human beings.
L’alta condició entails overcoming the limits of spaces that end up conditioning the artists’ creative work and their later enjoyment since, according to exhibition curator R. Silvestre, “neither the work of art is handled in just one space nor is it exhibited in a single place”. Proof of this is the present online exhibition, where the technological component has highlighted the diversity of possibilities within our reach.
In order to overcome the current difficulties of the pandemic, the 2020 Col·lecció Cañada Blanch Award is presented as a fully digital event. Under the initiative #CulturaSegura (#SafeCulture) and #CulturaSeguraUV (#SafeCultureUV), Cañada Blanch Foundation, the Universitat de València, the Association of Contemporary Art Galleries of the Valencian Community (LAVAC) and the Universitat Politècnica de València are joining forces and reinforcing their commitment to the region’s cultural world by presenting an online exhibition open to the public.
