FLORENCE.- Emerging Talents is a biennial project promoted by the Centre for Contemporary Culture Strozzina (CCCS), Florence , comprising an exhibition and prize which aims to identify and foster the younger generation of Italian artists, aged between 25 and 35 years. At the same time, it is an opportunity for the public to engage with Italian contemporary art. The selected artists are considered to be some of the most talented young Italians whose work has been exhibited or has aroused the interest of galleries but not yet won the kind of recognition needed to attract the attention of a wider public. The prize is a monographic publication devoted to the oeuvre of the winner, to be published by Silvana Editoriale.

On 18 February, the international jury, comprising Achim Borchardt-Hume (Whitechapel Gallery, London ), Barbara Gordon (Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC ), and Adam Szymczyk (Kunsthalle Basel), announced Luigi Presicce as the winner of the second Emerging Talents Award.

“The jury found the documentation of Presicce’s performances entrancing, enigmatic and haunting. The allusions to symbols from Italian art, references to Masonic and religious rituals... The physically demanding dimension of performance and the power of human presence are placed in the forefront. But there is something else... These scenarios seem also to embody the intimacy and stylization of illuminated manuscripts, small devotional paintings of saints and martyrs. Presicce’s actions made us feel both witness and participant in rituals we cannot completely decipher and which places art in the realm of the kind of contemplation once reserved for religious experience.”

An exhibition of works by all 16 selected artists is on view at the CCCS, Palazzo Strozzi, Florence , until 1 May 2011. Other artists taking part are Alessandro Ceresoli, Valentino Diego, Giovanni Ozzola, Antonio Rovaldi, Ludovica Carbotta, Loredana Di Lillo, Invernomuto, Margherita Moscardini, Giorgio Andreotta Calò, Riccardo Benassi, Luca Francesconi, Alberto Tadiello, Meris Angioletti, Rossana Buremi, Patrizio Di Massimo.