For the 20th Sint-Niklaas International Bookplates and Small Printmaking Competition 2015 one of the main prizes is dedicated to the theme ‘The Portrait’. We recorded entries from 51 countries worldwide. 519 artists participated; they sent no less than 1,283 artworks.
LAUREATES OF THE 2015 COMPETITION:
The City of Sint-Niklaas prize for the best bookplate goes to 78-year-old (!) Motoaki Fujimoto from Japan. His traditional Japanese woodcut was directly recognisable to the jury as a mark of ownership. Although it was printed using an age-old technique, the work sports a modern, simple and fresh design. The admirable creation rightfully deserves the prize for best bookplate: the face of a Japanese ninja takes on the role of guard for the book’s owner, as it were.
The City of Sint-Niklaas thematic prize for the best portrait goes to young Polish artist Michał Pisiałek.
His very modern portrait of a hipster enchanted the jury because of its quality etching technique, the choice of second-hand-looking brown-beige paper, the style of the design and the choice for a very typical and eloquent portrait of a representative of today’s urban subculture. The image has earned its rightful prominent place in the communications for the Small Printmaking Biennial The Portrait.
The City of Sint-Niklaas prize for the best relief print goes to Guilan Qiu from China. The way the image is formed was decisive for the jury in awarding the prize. The work makes optimal use of the possibilities of relief printing to let the image do full justice to itself. The patterns of the wood and laid lines in the paper are subtly inked in so they contribute to the image. The image is probably made up of several prints over each other and strip by strip covered or left empty, combined with the Japanese way of inking in, like hanga, Japanese woodcut.
Sergejs Kolecenko from Latvia claims the City of Sint-Niklaas prize for the best intaglio print for his Silence I - II - III, a triptych in mezzotint.
This technique is reasonably popular at the moment and lends itself beautifully to a rather nostalgic, dreamy atmosphere. The atmosphere in these prints is exactly the opposite, however: the fixed eyes and the shiny face of the man with the piercing and the quiff, or is it just a statue or a doll, in the portrait give the on-looker rather a feeling of uneasiness. The high technical level is evident from the contrast of the dim and shiny parts in the image that catch the light, and the gradually overflowing gradations of half-tones that make the image three-dimensional.
The City of Sint-Niklaas prize for the best digitally processed image goes also to an artist from Poland.
Grzegorz Izdebski, only 24, stood out with his original approach of a digitally printed image suggesting the use of a different printing technique. The bird with a helmet-covered human head is a strong presence on the paper. There is depth and sharpness in the image, despite the lack of colour and perspective. The technical qualities of the black-and-white nuances convinced the jury to award this work with the prize for the best digitally processed image.
The Victor Stuyvaert Prize goes to a young talent also from Poland Weronika Marszelewska.
The jury did not even need to deliberate over this particular work. The quality of it stood out a mile from all other relief prints of the under-thirties.
The work depicts a fictive landscape in only two colours: blue on black. The little specks of light in the hills afar were left out of the prints. The specks are without ink and use the colour of the underlying paper to add depth. The high technical level of this young artist is a pleasant surprise and her work looks very promising.
The Prize of Bookplate Association Graphia rightfully goes to Tomasz Hankus, yet again from Poland!
The perfection of the hands in the image and the balance and simplicity of the composition make this work a model of digital processing.
By way of encouragement, the jury wishes to draw attention to the quality of the works from a few artists who unfortunately did not make the list of laureates.
Therefore the jury wishes to give an honourable mention to: Gérard Maschietto (Belgium), Derek Michael Besant (Canada), Bea Van der Heijden (the Netherlands), Krzysztof Marek Bak (Poland) and Jacomijn Den Engelsen (the Netherlands).