Prize & Award

Champagne Perrier-Jouët is delighted to host Founded, an exhibition at Zoo 2009 of new work by Scoli Acosta. In 2008 Acosta was selected as the winner of the Champagne Perrier-Jouët Prize for Best Artist at Zoo from amongst 350 artists. He was awarded the Prize based on his recent achievements as well as his future potential. The independent selection panel of respected professionals included Sir Norman Rosenthal, former Exhibitions Secretary at the Royal Academy of Arts, 1977-2008, Times Arts Writer Nancy Durrant, artist Mat Collishaw and Director/Curator of the Kunsthalle Zürich Beatrix Ruf.

Acosta has developed a highly personalized iconography that employs a nearly obsessional approach to the transformation of everyday objects and found materials that draw upon his immediate environment and years of travel across the US and abroad. For his solo show at Zoo 2009 Acosta will present a new project entitled Founded. Unlike the majority of recent exhibitions, which have focused on particular places, his primary focus for Founded is to pull together an accumulation of experiences and overlapping geographies within a very particular context.

The exhibition title comes from the historic road signs along Highway 1 on the California coastline in reference to the Missions founded there and plays with the notions of the temporary and the permanent; the incorrect past tense of the word ‘find’; and the literal meaning ‘to melt and pour into a mold’. Like the last scene in the film Planet of the Apes, Acosta often relies upon the appropriation of manmade forms toiled over by natural processes. The sculptures consist of found or variations of found objects or materials such as a “Sluice” which is a long, sloping trough with grooves on the bottom into which water is directed to separate gold from gravel or sand. Levitating the Pentagon is a series of multi-media works which began as a reference to the anti-Vietnam War March on the Pentagon in 1967 and continues with a string of associations surrounding the form of the pentagon. These include a now defunct mural; the 1970’s science series Cosmos where the pentagon features as a 3-dimensional horizontal, illuminated screen; and the current reality series Survivorman in which a pentagon functions as a lifeboat continuously needing to be replenished with air.

Represented by Galerie Laurent Godin in Paris, Scoli Acosta was born (1973), lives and works in Los Angeles. Studies and travels include the Kansas City Art Institute, Kansas City, Missouri (1992-94), The Ultimate Akademie, Cologne, Germany (1995-97), Brooklyn, New York (1997-99), and Paris, France (2000-04). Recent solo exhibitions include Big Well Nada, Nada Art Fair, Miami, (2008); Carbon Footprint, Galerie Laurent Godin, Paris, (2008); Bountiful, LAXART, Los Angeles, (2008); Day was to Fall as Night was to Break, Daniel Reich Gallery, New York (2006). Recent group exhibitions include Flower Power, Villa Giulia, Verbania, Italy (2009); Phantom Sightings: Art After the Chicano Movement, LACMA, Los Angeles, (2008 and traveling until 2010); From and About Place: Art from Los Angeles, CCA, Tel Aviv, Israel (2008). Collections include the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Coleccion Jumex, Mexico City; Rubell Family Collection, Miami; and FRAC Limousin, France.

The House of Champagne Perrier-Jouët was created in 1811 to celebrate the marriage between two of Epernay’s most established families. Its boutique champagnes were soon embraced by the royal courts of Europe, and the House became celebrated for its avant-garde approach, developing the first vintage champage in 1825 and introducing today’s ‘Brut’ style in 1846 for its UK clientele. This unique spirit later found favour with the ‘new bohemians’, as Perrier-Jouët became the particular favourite of the likes of Oscar Wilde, Coco Chanel, Lillie Langtry and Edward VII.

Champagne Perrier-Jouët’s longstanding involvement in patronage and support of the Arts dates from 1902, when it commissioned Art Nouveau protagonist Emile Gallé to design his iconic anemone bottle for their Prestige Cuvee Belle Epoque, to reflect the House’s distinctive Grand Cru Chardonnay-driven style. Today, Maison Belle Epoque, Perrier-Jouët’s private chateau in Epernay, is a living homage to the master craftsmen of the Art Nouveau movement, housing a collection sourced from around the world of the finest works of such luminaries as Gallé, Majorelle, Lalique, Guimard, Rodin and Toulouse-Lautrec.

Champagne Perrier-Jouët is delighted to continue its sponsorship of Zoo Art Enterprises for the 4th year, as the latest initiative in over a century of commitment to fine art, and a broad programme of classical and contemporary patronage, ranging from the Royal Academy of Arts to the Contemporary Art Society.

 

For more information, please contact:
Isobel Anderson
Champagne Perrier-Jouët UK
T: +44 (0)208 538 4340