ICA Announces Finalists For 2013 Foster Prize

Sarah Bapst, Katarina Burin, Mark Cooper and Luther Price have been named finalists for the Institute for Contemporary Art's 2013 James and Audrey Foster Prize, which showcases top art made in the region, the museum announced today. The four artists will be featured in the Foster Prize exhibit, organized by ICA chief curator Helen Molesworth, at the museum from May 1 to July 21, 2013.

Note that the ICA plans to present this next edition of its "biennial" exhibit nearly three years after is last one in 2010. Make of that what you will.

"The James and Audrey Foster Prize is key to the ICA's efforts to nurture and recognize Boston-area artists of exceptional promise," the museum says. "The program creates a significant opportunity for four locally-based artists to exhibit their work in a leading contemporary art museum, and offers a substantial financial award of $25,000 to the winner and $1,500 to the finalists."

The ICA offers the following profiles of the finalists:

Sarah Bapst’s sculpture and works-on-paper explore how to approach the arbitrariness of art in making decisions about form and content. Bapst’s work has been included in numerous group exhibitions, including Selections 10, Bakalar Gallery at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Boston; Out of the Blue at the Attleboro Arts Museum, Attleboro, Massachusetts; and  Marks, Target Gallery at the Torpedo Factory, Alexandria, Virginia. Awards include a Painting Fellowship from the Artists’ Foundation of Massachusetts, and a Visual Arts Fellowship for Works on Paper from the National Endowment for the Arts. Bapst received an M.F.A. from Cranbrook Academy of Art and a B.A. from Indiana University. She teaches at Massachusetts College of Art and Design.

Katarina Burin's drawings, structures, larger installations and collages are influenced by the documentation and circulation of historical architecture and design imagery. In February 2013 she will be co-organizing and participating in a show and series of events marking the 50th anniversary of the Carpenter Center at Harvard University, where she is currently Visiting Lecturer in Visual and Environmental Studies. Burin’s work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Andreas Grimm Galerie, New York and Munich; Lucile Corty, Paris; Clockwork, Berlin; Country Club, Cincinnati; and Form/Content, London.  She has participated in group exhibitions at White Columns, New York; Participant Inc, New York; Künstlerhaus Palais Thurn and Taxis, Bregenz; Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin; and Gerhardsen Gerner, Berlin. Burin received her M.F.A. from Yale University and her B.F.A. from University of Georgia.

Mark Cooper's paintings and sculptures made with fiberglass pieces, layered with rice paper, paint, silk-screens, and varying images and patterns, explore dualities of culture and meaning. Cooper is known for his large public art pieces, made in collaboration with children, hospital patients, students, and other constituencies, for such institutions as the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Boston College Museum, Capital Children's Museum and Corcoran Museum in Washington, DC, DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Grounds, and the Whitney Museum of American Art at Philip Morris.  He has received equal attention for his solo gallery and Museum exhibitions including his recent More Is More exhibition at Samson Gallery in Boston.  Mark Cooper has received numerous grants and fellowships including an Open Society Institute Fellowship and Mass. Cultural Council Fellowships in Sculpture and in Crafts.   He received his M.F.A. from Tufts University/School of the Museum of Fine Arts (SMFA), and is currently an Adjunct Professor at Boston College, as well as a Graduate and Regular Faculty at the SMFA. Cooper's work is in several major museums, as well as corporate and private collections.

Luther Price studied Sculpture and Media/Performing Arts at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, where he currently teaches. Known for his work as a filmmaker, Price also makes handmade slides out of found footage that he cuts up, reassembles, combines, and otherwise alters. He often presses other things between the two glass plates of the slides, projecting ants, dirt, and adhesive materials onto the gallery wall. Like his work with Super-8 and 16 mm film, these slides are studies of a dying technology, pushing and exploring the qualities of light projected through and onto a variety of materials. Price’s work is currently on view in the exhibitionSecond Nature: Abstract Photography Then and Now at the DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln, Massachusetts (through April 21, 2013). His work was selected for the 2012 Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and has also been presented at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the San Francisco Cinematheque, and the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, among other institutions.