BARCELONA.- Ignasi Aballí has been named winner of the fifth edition of the award organised by Fundació Joan Miró and Obra Social ”la Caixa”, one of the most prestigious and generous contemporary art awards in the world.

Obra Social ”la Caixa” covers the cash prize of 70,000 euros and the production of a monographic exhibition of Aballi’s work. The show will be presented at the Fundació Joan Miró in 2016 and will then travel to other art centers.

Elisa Durán, Deputy Director-General of ”la Caixa” Banking Foundation and Rosa Maria Malet, Director of Fundació Joan Miró, announced the artist awarded with the 2015 Joan Miró Prize. This is the fifth edition of the biannual award, which has previously honoured the artists Olafur Eliasson, Pipilotti Rist, Mona Hatoum and Roni Horn.

The members of the jury for the 2015 Joan Miró Prize are Alfred Pacquement, Director of the Musée national d'art moderne-Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris); Vicent Todolí, art director of the Art Center HangarBicocca (Milano); Poul Erik Tøjner, Director of the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art (Humlebæk, Denmark); Rosa Maria Malet, Director of Fundació Joan Miró (Barcelona); and Nimfa Bisbe, Director of ”la Caixa” Foundation Contemporary Art Collection. The members of the jury, all of whom are internationally recognised professionals in the contemporary art field, choose the winner based on the criteria of innovation and creative freedom, values that characterised the work of Joan Miró.

The jury statement for the 2015 Joan Miró Prize praises Ignasi Aballí for “his ongoing reflection on the limits of painting and representation, his meticulous attention to the significant consequences of the tiniest changes in strategies of resignification, and his role as a mentor for younger artists.”

Ignasi Aballí (Barcelona, 1958) studied Fine Arts at the University of Barcelona. His work has been shown at Fundació Joan Miró, MACBA, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Museu de Serralves in Porto, Ikon Gallery in Birmingham, the Drawing Center in New York, ZKM in Karlsruhe, the 2007 Venice Biennale, and at galleries and art centres in Madrid, Barcelona, Mexico, Belgium, Brazil and China. After starting out as a painter, Aballí opened up to other actions and conditions of production: the effects of dust or sunlight on materials, the compilation of information from newspapers, and images that are reproduced endlessly. His works are made anew with the materials and the conditions of perception and conditions in which they are shown.

The prestige of the Fundació Joan Miró and the financial support of Obra Social ”la Caixa”, which provides the cash prize of 70,000 and covers the cost of producing the exhibitions, have made the Joan Miró Prize one of the most prestigious art awards in the world, in spite of its relatively short history. In addition to the cash prize of 70,000 euros and an invitation to exhibit his works at Fundació Joan Miró in Barcelona, the winning artist also receives a trophy created by André Ricard. To create the trophy, the acclaimed designer drew inspiration from the spirit and identity of Joan Miró and of the Fundació. Ricard’s design reflects the desire for innovation and the vitality of the Prize and of the artist whose name it bears.