Preview
Fadri Cadonau (*1996) was awarded the 2025 Art Prize of the Bündner Kunstverein. Part of the prize is the solo exhibition at the Art Museum Graubünden, where the artist takes the visitors on a journey of discovery.
Fadri Cadonau lives and works in Ilanz. His works, beyond their formal quality, always reveal content related anchor points that reflect their social issues. In the 2024 annual exhibition he examined the intricate system of the metropolis and thus convinced the jury of the Art Prize: A house built with the simplest of materials contains a video, in which one recognises the artist how he builds a house out of red and white striped building site barriers in the middle of a street crossing in Buenos Aires. The temporary construction turned into a small sanctuary in midst of the throbbing life of the metropolis, in which living space is a rare commodity. At the same time, it became an obstacle for the busy street traffic, which as part of the architectural requirement had to be accepted and needed to be by-passed.
The present exhibition at the Labor of the of the Art Museum Graubünden is a walk-through spatial installation that begins with a tonal anticipation and leads to a sculptural installation. The experience of seeing and hearing culminates in a mutual dialogue, in which perception, medial reality and its enactment blend together. Thereby Cadonau connects to contemporary discussions on the extent to which different perceptions shape the social debates of our time: How do our ideas of truth come about? By what means can our imagination of it even be guided? What are the causes of these discrepancies?
With the Art Prize the Bündner Kunstverein pays tribute to Fadri Cadonau’s work, which is as passionate as it is poetic and that shows itself very openly and yet is always precisely formulated.