NEWS:SALT LAKE ART CENTER ANNOUNCES Recipient of the Catherine Doctorow Prize for Contemporary Painting: KIM SCHOENSTADT

SALT LAKE ART CENTER ANNOUNCES
Recipient of the Catherine Doctorow Prize for Contemporary Painting:
KIM SCHOENSTADT
Awardee to receive $15,000 and a solo exhibition, opening November 4, 2011


June 8, 2011
Contact: Emily Brunt | emilyb@slartcenter.org | 801.328.4201 x115

SALT LAKE CITY, UT – Salt Lake Art Center and the Jarvis and Constance Doctorow Family Foundation are pleased to announce that Kim Schoenstadt is the inaugural recipient of the Catherine Doctorow Prize for Contemporary Painting. In addition to a $15,000 cash award, the Art Center will host a solo exhibition of Ms. Schoenstadt’s work from November 4, 2011 through January 7, 2012.

Adam Price, Executive Director of Salt Lake Art Center, explains: “The Art Center is very proud to be the permanent home of the Catherine Doctorow Prize for Contemporary Painting. The generosity of the Jarvis and Constance Doctorow Family Foundation will grant residents of Utah the wonderful new opportunity to experience exceptional contemporary painting from around the nation. I am thrilled to have an artist with the conceptual and technical depth of Ms. Schoenstadt as the inaugural recipient of the Catherine Doctorow Prize.”

Ms. Schoenstadt embodies the spirit of the Doctorow Prize through her passionate dedication to a visionary practice in contemporary painting. Her site-specific projects, which frequently include elements of audience participation, involve painterly installations that incorporate complex urban views, themes of modernist architecture, and historically informed explorations of image and society.

Writing in the Los Angeles Times, art critic Christopher Knight notes that Ms. Schoenstadt’s creations are those of “a view painter. Her work records complex urban landscapes. Unlike her 18th century forebears, however, who lived in a world where visual perception was being elastically stretched by telescopes, microscopes, and other ground-glass lenses meant to aid the limited range of a human eye, the Los Angeles artist surveys very different terrain. Her knotty work charts the intersection between the bricks and mortar of actual city streets and the effervescent elements of virtual reality. That’s where we live now.”

Ms. Schoenstadt has exhibited at: the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Wadsworth Atheneum Museum, Hartford; Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions; National Gallery, Prague, Czech Republic; San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art; the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Netherlands; as well as locations in New York, Paris, Munich and Istanbul. Her work has been reviewed in ArtForum, the Los Angeles Times, Artweek Magazine, and Art in America.

The process that led to Ms. Schoenstadt’s body of work was a rigorous one. The Art Center received nominations from leading curators, critics, gallerists, historians, and educators around the country. The nominations were then submitted for a juried review by: Philipp Kaiser, Senior Curator, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Shawn Rossiter, Editor, 15 Bytes; Scot Indrisek, Senior Editor, Modern Painters magazine; Adam Price, Executive Director, Salt Lake Art Center; Micol Hebron, Senior Curator, Salt Lake Art Center; Suzanne Larsen, representative of the Jarvis and Constance Doctorow Foundation.

Suzanne Larson, daughter of Catherine Doctorow, remarked: “The distinguished nominators brought to light wonderful artists in the search for this year's winner of the Catherine Doctorow Prize for Contemporary Painting. Given a pool of such dedicated and talented painters, choosing a winner was extremely difficult. That being said, the Doctorow Family Foundation is very pleased to welcome Kim Schoenstadt as this year's recipient of the solo show at the Art Center and honorarium. Our mother, Catherine, would be so pleased.” This is the first installment of this bi-annual prize national painting prize that recognizes exceptional emerging and mid-career artists in the United States.

Image: Kim Schoenstadt, Odd Lots Series: Hartford/Fiction, 2010, Paint and pen on wall, 123.5″ x 315″, Photo Credit:Allen Phillips/Wadsworth Atheneum

For more press images and info on the Doctorow Prize: http://www.slartcenter.org/?page_id=632
Also see: www.kimschoenstadt.com

Salt Lake Art Center
Salt Lake Art Center is Utah’s premiere venue for contemporary art, and was recognized as Best Museum in the state of Utah for 2011. Founded in 1931 and now located in the heart of Salt Lake City, the Art Center exhibits groundbreaking work by leading local and international artists. Recent exhibitions include Robert Fontenot’s The Place This Is, a conceptual exploration of the stories and histories of Utah and America through materials commonly associated with the domestic realm; Contemporary Masters: Artist-Designed Miniature Golf, the Sundance Film Festival exhibition New Frontier, and Lawn Gnomes Eat Your Hearts Out, a community public sculpture initiative designed to move the very best in contemporary art outside the four walls of the gallery and into places where people work, live, and play. Current exhibitions include: Fallen Fruit of Utah, a state-wide collaboration with museums and individuals about the role of fruit in Utah’s history, led by artist collective Fallen Fruit; and upcoming, the annual installment of Sundance Film Festival New Frontier and Play Me I’m Yours, inviting the people of Salt Lake to show off their piano skills on street corners all over Salt Lake. The Art Center rounds out its offerings with a lively mix of award-winning educational programs, film screenings, panel discussions, and events celebrating Salt Lake’s vibrant local art scene. www.slartcenter.org

###


Emily Brunt
Director of Communications, Salt Lake Art Center
801.328.4201 x115 m: 801.232.7362 | emilyb@slartcenter.org | www.slartcenter.org
20 South West Temple | Salt Lake City, UT 84101
facebook.com/saltlakeartcenter | @slartcenter | Tue-Thu & Sat 11:00 AM to 6:00 PM, Fri 11 AM to 9 PM