ROME.- Diego Marcon (Busto Arsizio, 1985) with the work Ludwig wins the 2018 edition of MAXXI BVLGARI Prize, the museum’s project supporting and promoting young artists, this year revised, enriched and internationalised thanks to the support of an exceptional partner like BVLGARI.

The winner received the award from the hands of Oscar-winning director Giuseppe Tornatore, President of the project’s Honour Committee, at the presence of Giovanna Melandri, President of the Fondazione MAXXI, and Jean Christophe Babin, CEO of the Gruppo Bvlgari, as well as jury members Yuko Hasegawa, David Elliott and the Director of MAXXI Arte Bartolomeo Pietromarchi.

The international jury composed of David Elliott, Independent Curator, Yuko Hasegawa, Artistic Director at MOT in Tokyo, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Artistic Director at the Serpentine Galleries in London, Hou Hanru, Artistic Director at MAXXI and Bartolomeo Pietromarchi, Director of MAXXI Arte, have chosen the work by Diego Marcon, which will enter the permanent collection of MAXXI Arte. It was selected “for the unique combination between analogical and digital language, for the ability to interpret with great efficacy the contradictory spirit of our times through fragments of the musical and artistic tradition of the past; for the poetic and evocative way of combining the global dimension with the existential dimension”.

Ludwig, is a video projected on the entire wall that employs the CGI (computer-generated imagery), technology used in computer graphics for the rendering of digital special effects in film, television, advertising, video game simulations. The protagonist is a child lighting a match in a suspended space that we then discover to be that of a boat at the mercy of a storm. As the match burns, the child sings a song with verses written by the artist that touch on themes related to the desperation and fatigue of existence. The match goes out, the music stops and then everything starts again in a loop. The relentless reiteration of the scene generates a claustrophobic and obsessive atmosphere. The score for piano and voice is by Federico Chiari, performed by Marco de Gaspari and sang by Gianluigi Sartori, student of the Coro Voci Bianche of the Teatro alla Scala Academy of Milan. This work explores Marcon’s experimentation into the image and the evocative power of that which is not immediately visible.

Diego Marcon, born in Busto Arsizio (Varese, Italy) in 1985. Recent shows: Whitechapel Gallery (London 2013), Fondation d'entreprise Ricard (Paris 2011), Centre international d'art et du paysage (Vassivière 2015), NAi - National Architecture lnstitute (Rotterdam 2009), Artspace (Auckland 2013), Matadero (Madrid 2016), Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo (Turin 2010), Museo Villa Croce (Genoa 2015), PAC - Padiglione Arte Contemporanea (Milan 2015, 2018) e Museion (Bolzano 2017, 2018).

The works by this edition’s shortlisted artists - Talia Chetrit, Invernomuto (Simone Bertuzzi and Simone Trabucchi) and Diego Marcon - are on show at MAXXI in an exhibition curated by Giulia Ferracci till November 4. A fluid path, a real “immersion” in the artistic universe of the artists, who have proposed projects capable of restoring the many suggestions of their work.