Artists: Kay Bachmann, Tilo Baumgärtel, Christiane Baumgartner, Tim Eitel, Henriette Grahnert, Christine Hill, Christian Jankowski, Martin Kippenberger, Uwe Kowski, Susanne Kühn, Thomas Locher, Regine Müller-Waldeck, Michel Majerus, Olaf Nicolai, Neo Rauch, Evelyn Richter, Christoph Ruckhäberle, Karin Sander, Andreas Slominski, Julia Schmidt, David Schnell, Annette Schröter, Tina Schulz, Wolfgang Tillmans, Albrecht Tübke, Matthias Weischer

Opening on 06-NOV-09 at 7 p.m.

Sachsen Bank has a long tradition of engagement in the promotion of art and culture in Saxony and Central Germany. The parent institutes BW-Bank and Sachsen LB already supported contemporary art through many sponsorship schemes and through art acquisition. Thus Sachsen Bank is now pursuing this engagement. A high point in the artistic engagement of the credit institute is the Sachsen Bank Art Prize. In cooperation with the Museum of Visual Arts Leipzig, the Sachsen Bank awards this prize to artists who are beginning their careers. The prize was first awarded in 2002, since then the award ceremony has taken place every two years. The Sachsen Bank Art Prize comprises an exhibition by the prize-winner, a catalogue, and the purchase of a work or a group of works for the Museum of Visual Arts Leipzig. Also, Sachsen Bank sponsors the prize for the Leipzig Annual Exhibition. Each autumn the exhibition gives various artists the chance to showcase their work in Leipzig and to partake in an artistic dialogue. Alongside financial promotion, an individual exhibition for the winner is also linked to the prize.

The Sachsen Bank promotes contemporary art in Central Germany through purchases of the works of younger artists. Alongside art purchases for the private collection, Sachsen Bank is also involved in promotion of galleries and museums.

The close, lively collaboration with the Museum of Contemporary Art Leipzig stretches back to 1998, the year when the museum opened in the Herfurth'sche Villa. Since then the bank has promoted many concrete individual projects, exhibitions, project grants as well as the GfZK's learning programmes. From 2008 the engagement will be continued for a further three years with the support of the project series >ROOM 107<. In this series four artists from Leipzig will be shown annually in GfZK-1.

As part of the >Carte Blanche< programme, Sachsen Bank will be showcasing their collection for the first time. The collection comprises some 350 works or groups of works, all of which focus on Saxon art in particular. These works can normally be seen in office and conference spaces, hallways and in the bank's casino. Amongst the collection are works by Tim Eitel, Christine Hill, Matthias Hoch, Neo Rauch, Evelyn Richter, Ricarda Roggan and Matthias Weischer. On the one hand, the exhibition will document the development of the collection and thereby also trace a part of Leipzig's art history since the beginning of the 1990s, and on the other it aims to show how these >art pieces< are integrated into daily working process and how the collection becomes such a self-evident part of the daily life of the employees. A supporting programme offers information about the bank's backgrounds and motives for compiling their collection this way. In addition it is planned that during the course of the exhibition the bank's conferences and events be relocated to the Museum of Contemporary Art. This relocation corresponds to the cooperative relationship between both institutions, in which two-way exchange is main focus.