3 finalists named for Temple art prize

Three artists have been chosen as finalists in a new competition established by Temple University's Tyler School of Art. They are Sanford Biggers of New York; Michael Rakowitz of Chicago and New York; and Ryan Trecartin of Philadelphia.

The first Jack Wolgin International Competition in the Fine Arts will award the winner $150,000, a prize the organizers call "the world's largest given to a visual artist in a juried competition."

The three artists' work will be on view at Temple Gallery at Tyler Oct. 1-31, with the winner to be announced Oct. 22.

Organizers also have revealed the names of the three jurors. They are Melissa Chiu, director of the Asia Society in New York; Paolo Colombo, art advisor to the Istanbul Museum of Modern Art and managing director of Dorje Film, Rome; and Ingrid Schaffner, senior curator at the Institute for Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania.

Biggers, 38, is a musician as well as an artist, and his work has appeared at Prospect. 1/New Orleans biennial, Illuminations at the Tate Modern, the Whitney Biennial and Freestyle at the Studio Museum in Harlem.

Rakowitz, 35, is preparing for a solo show at the Tate Modern in London, and has exhibited at P.S. 1 in Long Island City, the Museum of Modern Art and MassMOCA.

Trecartin is a filmmaker and artist who at 28 already has been the subject of major media attention. He has shown work at the 2006 Whitney Biennial, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, Saatchi Gallery in London and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Born in Webster, Texas, and raised in Ohio, he now lives in South Philadelphia.

All his work is collaborative, he says, and moves across performance, painting, sculpture and video.

"The videos, they're narrative, and one of the main themes people pick up on is how, as technology becomes more a part of us, we express ourselves through that technology," he said. "I like exploring the dynamic between different realities. What defines a person becomes less and less about the body and more about ideas and personality."

Wolgin, a Philadelphia real-estate developer and philanthropist, last December gave $3.7 million to endow the annual prize.