Levant Art

The Buddy Prize is an award dedicated to contemporary art. The official winner list of the 2026 Buddy Prize has recently been announced, with eight young artists selected for this edition. The 2nd Buddy Prize is jointly initiated by LEVANT ART and ART FOREST. Following the selection mechanism of the inaugural edition, the 2nd Buddy Prize features a review system established by a group of like‑minded art practitioners and peers referred to as “buddies”. The prize is open to Chinese artists under the age of 35. The jury consists of nine members based in Düsseldorf, New York, Shanghai, Beijing and other cities, comprising gallery owner, art institution directors, founders of art foundations, curators, art critics and professional artists. @gaoyutao @youming_jin @riprap.art @shaoweistudio @yyyyangdi @zcjssj @zhu__linan @goyoge Nearly 200 submissions from major art academies worldwide were received. After multiple rounds of discussion and voting, the panel finalized the winners from 28 shortlisted finalists. The prize originally planned to award seven recipients; one additional place was added due to a tied vote, bringing the total number of winners to eight. Among them, Wang Haiqing has been awarded the Grand Buddy Prize. Wang Jinglan, Xie Xinchun, Peng Ziming, Yan Dafu, Ye Yi, Yang Luning and Wang Yiyi have received the Buddy Prize. @haiiqiing @selina_xie_ @peng_ziming @y.luning @yyi_ye @yandafu_art @yyi_yiiwng

We are greatly honored to announce that artist WANG Yiyi has been awarded the 2nd Buddy Prize 2026 in Shanghai. 阆风艺术非常荣幸地宣布艺术家王奕奕获得2026 第二届小伙伴奖。 #Buddyprize #contemporaryart #prizewinner #Wangyiyi #王奕奕 @yyi_yiiwng @udkberlin @klassefavre Wang Yiyi‘s practice, spanning painting, installation, and performance, persistently probes the boundaries of modernity. Humor and irony serve as the fulcrum of her work, from which she unfolds a keen observation of the inherent contradictions between individuals and society. In her paintings, the fissure between painterly language and cartoon aesthetics is deliberately foregrounded, from which emerges a glimpse of a gaze that is at once kitsch and grotesque. As a metaphor for the spirit of the age, a sense of the absurd permeates both the surface and the depths of everyday experience. Layer upon layer of imagery and form intertwine, continuously unsettling and dissolving established frameworks of power and freedom, rendering their meanings fluid and suspended. Within a chromatic atmosphere imbued with warmth, these figures contemplate the present with an almost transcendent calm, silently bearing witness to a contemporary landscape where hope and absurdity coexist.

We are greatly honored to announce that artist YE Yi has been awarded the 2nd Buddy Prize 2026 in Shanghai. 阆风艺术非常荣幸地宣布艺术家叶易获得2026 第二届小伙伴奖。 #Buddyprize #contemporaryart #prizewinner #Yeyi #叶易 @beauxartsparis YE Yi, born in 1995 in Quzhou, lives and works in Paris. He received his Master’s degree from the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris in 2025. His practice takes functional spaces as its point of departure, focusing on the generative relationship between space and specific emotional states. His recent work centers on the office as a highly rationalized and regulated environment. Within this context, he understands melancholy (mélancolie) as a state of misalignment produced by rational structures—one in which action is suppressed while thought and emotion are amplified and continue to operate. Drawing on references from literature, tragedy, and cultural history, he traces how such emotional structures recur across different historical moments and how they are re-experienced within contemporary spaces. Working primarily with sculpture and installation, Yi employs materials such as stone, leather, and metal—each carrying dual cultural associations and sensory qualities—to capture and articulate the ongoing tension between rationality and irrationality.

We are greatly honored to announce that artist WANG Jinglan has been awarded the 2nd Buddy Prize 2026 in Shanghai. 阆风艺术非常荣幸地宣布艺术家王婧岚获得2026 第二届小伙伴奖。 #Buddyprize #contemporaryart #prizewinner #Wangjinglan #王婧岚

We are greatly honored to announce that artist @peng_ziming has been awarded the 2nd Buddy Prize 2026 in Shanghai. 阆风艺术非常荣幸地宣布艺术家彭子铭获得2026 第二届小伙伴奖。 #Buddyprize #contemporaryart #prizewinner #Pengziming #彭子铭 @humboldt.uni kunsthochschulekassel Ziming Peng was born in 1995 in Yuan’an, Hubei Province, China. In his current transmedial artistic practice, he uses the image as a point of entry for analyzing reality. Drawing on 3D animation, media installation, game engines, and AI-generated imagery, he investigates how technical images reorganize and shape perception, as well as the symbiotic relationships that emerge between humans and technical objects. From October 2024 to September 2025, he completed a one-year artist residency at Künstlerhaus Meinersen in Germany. The new works developed during this period focus on how simulation becomes a formative force and a process of reality-making within a rapidly changing image environment. His works have been presented at international film festivals and in exhibitions across Europe and Asia. These artistic practices are consciously conceived as open experimental fields in which critical, poetic, and structural metaphorical spaces unfold. In his work, the visible always appears as an echo of the invisible. He is currently a PhD candidate at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, supervised by Prof. Dr. Shintaro Miyazaki at the Department of Cultural History, Cultural Theory, and Media Studies. From a media-archaeological perspective, his research focuses on the technical aesthetics and visual mediality of 3D and AI-generated images, with particular attention to the structural properties of contemporary imaging processes. In his image research, he situates image production and visualization within an a priori context shaped by technical environments, placing the interaction between humans and image technologies at the center of his inquiry. After completing his BA in Oil Painting at the Hubei Institute of Fine Arts in 2017, he studied Bildende Kunst at the Kunsthochschule Kassel from 2019 to 2024 under Prof. Bjørn Melhus, graduating with distinction.

We are greatly honored to announce that artist YANG Luning has been awarded the 2nd Buddy Prize 2026 in Shanghai. #Buddyprize #contemporaryart #prizewinner #Yangluning #杨璐宁 @y.luning @sladeschool Luning Yang makes sculpture. They draw inspiration from everyday sensations and the material associations that emerge during the making process. Working with both industrial raw materials and found objects, they transform them through making and collaging into character-driven forms. Their practice explores the solidity of urban landscapes and the fragility of personal memory, aesthetically capturing and dwelling on poetic moments situated between humor and melancholy. Their recent work is about imaginative narratives of transitional spaces and adolescence. Luning Yang (b. 1996, Beijing) currently lives and works in Beijing. They received their BA from Tongji University in 2019 and their MFA from the Slade School of Fine Art in 2022, where they were awarded The Slade Prize. In 2023, they received the Studiomakers Prize, jointly presented by Outset Contemporary Art Fund, the City of London, and SET. They were also commissioned by Outset Contemporary Art Fund to create a work for the Outset Corridor at Frieze London.

#Buddyprize #contemporaryart #prizewinner We are greatly honored to announce that artist YAN Dafu has been awarded the 2nd Buddy Prize 2026 in Shanghai. 阆风艺术非常荣幸地宣布艺术家颜达夫获得2026第二届小伙伴奖。 #Yandafu 颜达夫 @yandafu_art @unioftheartslondon Yan Dafu (b. 1994) received his MA from Chelsea College of Arts, University of the Arts London, and is currently based in Hangzhou. His practice investigates the space—both conceptual and physical—between the macro-anxieties of geopolitics and the micro-realities of individual existence. Working primarily through installation, sculpture, and painting, he translates abstract tensions of safety and unease into a material “negotiation” between object and space. Yan approaches his studio as a testing ground, where material properties and manual processes act as conceptual “generators.” His works form circulatory systems that connect external phenomena with internal perception—functioning not as declarative statements, but as provisional sites for contemplation, touch, and potential reconfiguration.

#Buddyprize #contemporaryart #prizewinner We are greatly honored to announce that artist Xie Xinchun has been awarded the 2nd Buddy Prize 2026 in Shanghai. #Xiexinchun #谢欣纯 @selina_xie_ @risd1877 My artistic practice is shaped by a dual perspective, rooted in the vibrant urban landscape of Shanghai and refined by my journey in Providence, RI. This interplay explores the profound connection between craftsmanship, function, and the beauty of rationality. With extensive experience in fine arts and design, I transform ordinary interactions into memorable experiences, driven by a meticulous attention to detail and a deep understanding of materials. My work often deconstructs the human experience within the context of the modern city and its construction, revealing the inherent aesthetic and emotional resonance in meticulously crafted objects and spaces. I am committed to guiding artistic projects from conceptualization to impactful exhibition, ensuring a cohesive and thought-provoking presentation that bridges diverse cultural and architectural influences

#Buddyprize #contemporary #prizewinner We are greatly honored to announce that artist Wang Haiqing has been awarded the 2nd Buddy Prize 2026 in Shanghai. 阆风艺术非常荣幸地宣布艺术家#王海清 获得2026 第二届小伙伴奖。 @knstkdmdssldrf #wanghaiqing @haiiqiing Haiqing Wang (b. 1994, China) graduated from Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, where she studied under Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster and was awarded the title of Meisterschüler. She is currently a recipient of the dHCS scholarship and is undertaking a two-year studio residency at Mataré-Haus. Her practice unfolds through time- and space-based media, encompassing writing, film, sound, spatial experience, performance, and forms that remain yet to be named. Drawing on fragments of personal memory, reading, and social encounters, she continuously constructs fictional narratives and situates them within specific sites, generating imagined scenarios that probe the distance and tension between imagination and reality. At the same time, she is interested in how sensory experience intervenes in and reshapes one’s perception of the surrounding environment, opening up multiple pathways for understanding the world. Her recent works and performances have been presented at Westfälischer Kunstverein (Münster, 2026), Rinde am Rhein (Düsseldorf, 2025), Mouches Volantes (Cologne, 2025), Julia Stoschek Foundation (Düsseldorf, 2025), Schloss Moyland (Kleve, 2024), and Shanghai Duolun Museum of Modern Art (Shanghai, 2024). She has received the Creative Bursary, the Reise-Stipendium jointly awarded by Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen and the Kunst- und Kulturstiftung der Stadtsparkasse Düsseldorf, as well as the Deutschlandstipendium.

#崔昱 #Cuiyylu 深息果 Abyssal Pod 崔昱 Cui Yu ⽊板丙烯 Acrylic on Wood 60x50cm 2025

蒋涵萱 Jiang Hanxuan 不止一步 More Than a Step 多屏影像装置 （数字化超16mm胶片电影&4K，彩色&黑白，立体声音频） Multi-screen Video Installation (Digitized Super 16mm Film & 4K, Color & Black-and-White, Stereo Sound) 20’00’’ 2026 1/3+2AP

钱丽丽 Qian Lili 榔头，头发 Hammer, Hair 金属椅子，榔头，假发 Metal Chair, Hammer, Wig 尺寸可变 Variable Dimensions 2023 1/2+1AP