16th International ARC Salon
The Art Renewal Center® is pleased to present the winners and finalists of the 16th International ARC Salon Competition. The ARC received over 5,400 entries from 75 countries; 40%, 2,152 works have been selected as semi-finalists. Our finalists comprise a select group of the very top-rated entries, 1,273 works in all, or 24% of entries. Both finalists and semi-finalists have been published on the ARC website and all finalists and award winners are also published in the ARC Salon Book, International Realism.
This year, all winners and honorable mentions will also be included in the Lunar Codex, "The Polaris Collection". Art images will be laser-etched on nickel microfiche and/or digitized on terabyte memory cards and enclosed in a time capsule on the Griffin lunar lander, launched by SpaceX, and placed on the Moon in perpetuity. The Lunar Codex is a set of time capsules launched on three NASA-related missions, including the work of 7,000 creatives. It will be the first significant placement of contemporary arts on the Moon in 50 years. While focused on visual art, the Lunar Codex also includes a substantial collection of contemporary books, stories, poetry, music, essays, and film. "The Polaris Collection" is the third and final time capsule for the Lunar Codex and will be launched alongside NASA's VIPER Rover. Headed for the Lunar South Pole, the launch is currently scheduled for the fall/winter of 2023. The launch and landing will be livestreamed.
ARC has acquired 11 new works for the ARC collection, valued at over $80,000. Our highest award, Best in Show, which is a $25,000 prize, has gone to Mark Pugh for his entry of An Unsatisfying Ending, originally entered into both the Figurative and Portraiture Categories. About this work Pugh says, "With most of my paintings I try to tell a story. Here a young girl has torn up the pages of a book she was not happy with, while hiding it behind her back. I wanted to make sure the look on her face matched the story being told. The sunflowers behind her reflect her mood and mirror her stance."
A special congratulations is due to a new entrant to the ARC Salon, Chung-Wei Chien, for winning eight awards or honorable mentions in the 16th ARC Salon. This is only the second time in the ARC Salon’s history that a single artist has won so many awards in a single competition. His awards include Best Watercolor, the MEAM Purchase Award, American Fine Art Magazine Award and the Sheng Xinyu Art Award for his painting of Venice Symphony 2021 as well as Second Place Plein Air Category, an ARC Purchase Award, and The Artist Magazine Award for his painting titled Outside the Louvre. In addition, Chien has also been recognized with an honorable mention in the Still Life Category with his work of Just Light Your Own Light. All three of these works are watercolors and his prowess with the medium is clearly seen and felt as jurors spanning three categories and five separate organizations have recognized his work among the best entered into the competition.
In addition, we have had two artists win top awards in more than one category, Mark Pugh has also won 3rd place in both Portraiture and Imaginative Realism with his work of Autumn Roses by the Sea and Tyler Berry, has won second place in both the Fully from Life Category and Portraiture, for his work of Brandon.
Special congratulations are also due to all eleven of our first place category winners: Keiichiro Kono for his subtle capturing of emotional expression in Nazuna No. 2 (Figurative Category), Chanel Cha, for her allegorical portrait of Dreaming (Portrait Category), Arantza Sestayo for her moonlight and mysterious work, Lone Animals (Imaginative Realism Category), Narelle Zeller, for her beautiful flowers, fruits and lace, filled with hidden dangers in The Weaving (Still Life Category), Jake Gaedtke for his soft nocturne, Midnight Shadows (Landscape Category), César Orrico for his thoughtful use of 360 degrees in Bifronte (Sculpture Category), Shane Wolf for capturing the sensation of weight and dramatic perspective in In Trutina (Drawing Category), Parsoua Mahtash for his emotional interpretation and perhaps symbolic portrayal of the life of a stray dog in 01 Departure – A Tale of Middling (Animal Category), Louis Szapary for After the Duel (Fully From Life Category), Jim McVicker for Begonias and Sunlight (Plein Air Category), and Kajal Patel, our 19 year old winner of the Teens Category, for her painting, Emergence.
Come join us for the 16th International ARC Salon Exhibition. The show will consist of approximately 75 to 100 works from the 16th International ARC Salon Competition. The exhibition is planned to open at Sotheby's NY, Sotheby's flagship New York City location, in the summer of 2023, where we will plan to hold our official award ceremony. This awe-inspiring international event will have artists from all over the world present, showcasing the true international nature and collaborative spirit in this area of Contemporary Art. Established in 1744, Sotheby's is the world's largest, and most dynamic marketplace for art and luxury.
Updates and additional information about the exhibition can be found on the Live Exhibition page.
For the first nine days that the results are live on the ARC website, from January 2 – January 10th, we will be holding an election for our People's Choice Award! Visitors to the ARC website are able to vote for up to 10 of their favorite finalists or winning works. The winner will receive $1,000 cash and a full page in the 16th ARC Salon publication, International Realism, to be published by ACC Art Books, a division of a global publisher. Visit the People's Choice Award section on the ARC Salon results pages and click on the vote button below the works of your choice to cast your votes. Visitors will be prompted to login or create a free account so that we can track votes and prevent users from voting more than once. The winner will be revealed for this final award on January 26, 2023.
We have two museum awards, a Purchase Award given out by the MEAM Museum in Barcelona Spain, which went to Chung-Wei Chien for his painting of Venice Symphony 2021 and an exhibition award given out by the Springville Museum of Art, which went to Bryan Mark Taylor. The Springville Museum has devoted a "Featured ARC Artist" gallery wall to their museum in their Founders Gallery, to be awarded to a new artist each ARC Salon Competition. Taylor will have the opportunity to have a series of works hung at this prestigious location for the duration of this time period.
We are also excited to be having our fourth partnership with Fashion Week San Diego, where FWSD designers will be matched with the ten winning artists' works and the designers will then create an original couture outfit and “look” inspired by each of the ten works of art chosen from the ARC Salon. After the first successful event at FWSD in San Diego, October, 2018, we decided we wanted to bring this event to NY while the ARC Salon Exhibition as a whole was on view. The ARC Salon winning works along with the specially designed garments will be débuted at Sotheby’s NY in a singular event.
Also, 13 publications have participated: Fine Art Connoisseur, PleinAir Magazine, PoetsArtists, Enchanted Living Magazine, Southwest Art Magazine, The Artist Magazine, Artists & Illustrators Magazine, InsideArt, Western Art Collector, International Artist, American Art Collector, American Fine Art Magazine, and Sheng Xinyu Art have given out a combined total of 30 awards, and the chosen artists will each be featured in articles in one or more of these prominent publications. We will also be working with Rehs Contemporary Galleries once again to mount an exhibition and sale for artists chosen by this gallery from ARC Salon Finalists. This year Rehs has selected 10 artists to participate: Mark Pugh, Dan Chudzinski, Tina Spratt, Roland Mikhail, Christine Porter Lofaro, Margo Selski, Greg Hildebrandt, Shana Levenson, and Allen Douglas. View the Other Awards page to learn more about this exciting show.
For the first year we have also offered the ASMA Best Marine Art Awards. The American Society of Marine Artists have selected three outstanding marine themed works. One, "Best Marine Themed Work,” which is a $3,000 award, went to Bryan Mark Taylor, for his painting of First Evening Lights of the Loire Valley, and two Honorable Mentions, where each recipient will receive a $1,000 award, went to William Davis, for Passing Showers, Rams Ledge Light, Portland, Maine, and John McCartin for his work of Shimmering Blue.
A big thank you goes out to our 21 ARC Salon Category Jurors this year, who have donated their time and efforts in selecting, in addition to Best in Show, the First, Second, and Third Place awards in our eleven categories (Figurative, Portraiture, Imaginative Realism, Drawing, Sculpture, Landscape, Plein Air, Still Life, Animals, Fully From Life, and the Teens Category), as well as our special awards for Most Ambitious Work, which went to Eric Chauvin for his work of Plaudits for Porphyrius, Best Nude, which went to Alejandro Rosemberg for Reclining Nude P Series III, Best Social Commentary which went to Haotian Liu for his painting of Isolation Series 5, Best Trompe l'Oeil, which went to Slade Wheeler for his work of Love, Best Pastel, which went to Daud Akhriev, for his work of Laura Series: Glance, Best Watercolor, which went to Chung-Wei Chien for his painting of Venice Symphony 2021, and our Dual Category Award winners which were honorable mentions or near honorable mentions in more than one category with the same work. We would also like to thank an additional group of over 25 jurors who were involved in selecting our awards given out by partnering organizations. The 16th ARC Competition has been a combined effort of nearly 50 jurors, the incredible ARC Staff and all of our participating artists. Altogether, 221 awards and honorable mentions have been given out.
We can't thank everyone enough for helping to make this international competition a great success. A special congratulations is due to all of our winners and finalists!
We will be accepting entries to the next, 17th International ARC Salon Competition from March 1st, 2024, through June 13th, 2024.
To pre-order your copy of the 16th International ARC Salon Book, International Realism, featuring all winners, honorable mentions and finalists and published by ACC Art Books, click here.
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