Every two years the art promotion prize, founded in 1982 in Lucerne by Philippe Nordmann, is awarded in eleven Swiss regions to aspiring young regional artists. Because of the prestigious representation of previous winners, the Manor Art Prize has asserted itself as one of the most important instruments of art promotion in Switzerland. As the affiliated institution, Kunstmuseum Luzern has been able to extend the search for candidates for the 2009 Manor Art Prize to the whole of Central Switzerland. The jury, assembled on equal terms, decided to award the prize to Giacomo Santiago Rogado, born in Lucerne in 1979 and now living in Kriens.

With first, second, patience Rogado is presenting his two most recent groups of works, which he has made specially for the Exhibition associated with the Manor Art Prize. With their severely geometrical construction, rhythmic precision and almost mathematically determined colour palettes, the large-format, five-part groups Tactile and Patience dominate the two exhibition spaces and form a unified ensemble.

In this exhibition Rogado does not only compose geometrical variations of colour that play with perception, but connects these with their supposed opposite: he playfully juxtaposes his abstract with figurative painting. Thus Lucia, a delicate retro-aesthetic beauty, smiles down from the wall upon the abstract compositions of the ‘black holes’, and requires rather more concentration to contemplate – first, second, patience.