This year‘s ars viva Prize for Fine Arts, awarded by the Kulturkreis der deutschen Wirtschaft, is devoted to language in the visual arts.
The spoken and written word has palpably found its way into the visual arts. Language and linguistic structures can be found in the works of many artists—as side notes, quotations, and recordings, or as elements of performances or video and sound installations. For the 2011/12 ars viva Prize for Fine Arts, young artists were sought out who deliberately and directly use or address language in their works. With Erik Bünger (*1976 in Växjö, Sweden), Philipp Goldbach (*1978 in Cologne), and Juergen Staack (*1978 in Doberlug-Kirchhain), three artists were selected who sound out the periphery of linguistic possibilities in very different ways, reflecting on access to language and forms of its dissemination while at the same time questioning the ways in which it is understood and presented. This publication features the prize-winning works by these three young artists.