Big art awards given

Düsseldorf-born German artists Mischa Kuball and Günther Uecker are the recipients of major art awards recently. The ceremony will be held in January at the Art Museum Celle, which houses one of the largest light art collections in Germany.

Kuball will receive the German Light Art Award 2016, an award given by the Robert Simon Art Foundation and endowed with 10,000 euros.

Uecker received the North Rhine-Westphalia State Award, endowed with 25,000 euros. This award honors extraordinary accomplishments by people from or connected to the state and is given to Uecker for his life’s work in art and his immense influence on generations of young artists and on post-WW2 contemporary art in general.

About

     Mischa Kuball was born in 1959 in Düsseldorf and has been creating his light art in public and institutional spaces since 1984.  He was a visiting professor, working on the subject of light and space, at the Academy of Visual Arts Leipzig in 1999-2000 and from 2004 – 2008 taught media art at the University of Arts and Design Karlsruhe.  He has been a professor of media art at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne since 2007.   His light installations explore and express the social and political dimensions of lighting as an art medium.