The 1858 Prize for Contemporary Southern Art awards $10,000 to an artist whose work contributes to a new understanding of art in the South. Presented annually, the prize recognizes the highest level of artistic achievement in any media.
>http://www.1858prize.org/
ALEX PODESTA
LOUISIANA
>In all of my recent work I’ve culled the rich daydreams, misconceptions and experiences of childhood and re-contextualized them through the filters of adulthood, experience and education. This is an attempt to plumb the depths of the creative and comprehensive naivete´ of youth, and to illustrate in engaging and serio- comic ways, the role of fantasy, “othering” and conflict in nascent self-awareness.
>The central character in my works is usually found lost in a reverie of industriousness, paired with doppelganger or other machinations of his childish imagination. In concert these figures toil at understanding, through experimentation or illustration, existential perplexities ranging from possibly surmountable commonplaces to metaphysical impossibilities. Of course, no traction will really ever be gained with these pursuits. These boys and toys and bunny/man chimera will be forever locked in the Sisyphean toil of misapplication, miscomprehension and misunderstanding.
>http://www.1858prize.org/artist/alex-podesta/
>http://archive.is/pVV9t
>http://www.1858prize.org/artist/alex-podesta-2/
>http://archive.is/IHQlX