German household products maker Henkel organised the award for the seventh time this year, inviting applications by graphic artists from 29 countries in the region. Though graphic arts are the media for this year's contest, the contest invites submissions of photography and industrial design in alternating years.
Gellérfi will compete in the finals against Pola Dwurnik and Michael Tatarkiewicz from Poland, Nataliya Seruga and Miha Strukelj from Slovenia and Alban Muja from Kosovo.
The winner of this year's Henkel Art.Award will be picked by a jury headed by Gregor Podnar, who owns galleries in Berlin and Ljubljana. Other jury members are Jutta M. Pichler, director of the Caricature Museum of Krems, Monika Knofler, director of the graphic collections at Vienna's Academy of Fine Arts, and Zoran Petrovski, a curator for Skopje's National Museum.
The winner will be announced in Vienna on November 17. The award has a cash prize of EUR 7,000, and Henkel will sponsor an exhibition of the winner's work in his or her own country.
Last year, Rajmund Domán, a student at the industrial design department of Budapest's Moholy-Nagy University of Art, won the award for a portable coffee maker called kotyoGO.
With the cooperation of KulturKontakt Austria, the work of the finalists will be on display at Galerie ArtPoint in Vienna (1010 Wien, Universitätstrasse 5) between November 19 and December 5, and at the Platform for Young Art exhibition in Vienna between December 9 and February 9, 2009.
Gellérfi's work can be seen on Henkel's website.
Photo: henkel.hu
