LEWIS BALTZ RESEARCH FUND

Creation support

Lewis Baltz by Anthony Hernandez

Anthony Hernandez

Initiated by LE BAL in 2015 and supported by the Artworkers Retirement Society, the Lewis Baltz Research Fund awards an annual grant to support creative projects, including books, installations, performances, films, or experimental digital works.

The aim is to promote projects that stand out for their intellectual rigor and their political and societal inquiries, resonating with the artistic approach of American photographer Lewis Baltz (1945-2014).

Since its inception, the Lewis Baltz Research Fund has supported the work of: Alessandro Laita and Chiaralice Rizzi, Reich/Richter, Joanna Piotrowska, Johann Lurf, Tarrah Krajnak, Theo Simpson, Gabriela Löffel, Jo Ractliffe, Marina Gadonneix, Hélène Giannecchini, The Otolith Group and Andy Sewell.

The laureates are selected based on recommendations from the committee of the Lewis Baltz Research Fund, which consists of: Theresa Luisotti, Mark McCain, Slavica Perkovic, Thomas Zander, Florian Ebner, Walter Moser, Matthew S. Witkovsky and Diane Dufour.

About Lewis Baltz

Lewis Baltz was born in Newport, California. At the end of the 60s he began to use photography to describe a world that was increasingly mass produced and impersonal. His images of American industrial parks urban sprawl became landmarks of postwar art, mixing documentary with the strategies of conceptualism. Moving to Europe at the end of the 80s, Baltz responded to the new globalised world of electronic data, corporate architecture and precarious labor, expanding his approach to include video, image/text and installations. Lewis Baltz held various teaching positions and professorships and his works have been featured in numerous international solo and group exhibitions, including New Topographics at George Eastman House 1975, the 1977 Biennal Exhibition, Whitney Museum of American Art, in New York, the PS1 Museum, in New York in 1991, the Art Institute of Chicago in 2010, the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC in 2011, the Kunstmuseum Bonn and the Kestnergesellschaft Hannover in Germany in 2012, the Albertina in Vienna in 2013 and at LE BAL in Paris in 2014. Two exhibitions were dedicated to the artist, at the MAPFRE in Spain in 2016, and the Grand-Hornu in 2017 in Belgium.