Hotel Caro Prize

We are delighted to announce that the RAD Sculpture Park Award, offered by Hotel Caro, is being granted this year to artist Alexandru Ranga, for his remarkable work, "Matca."

Congratulations, Alexandru, for a creation that captivated the jury through its expressive power and the balance between materiality and concept.

We extend our sincere thanks to our partner, Hotel Caro, for supporting contemporary art and for promoting emerging talents within the RAD Art Fair.

"Matca" came to life as part of the 2023 exhibition "Noiz" at IOMO Gallery in Bucharest. It was created by copying and casting various plant elements found around the artist’s studio, which gives the piece its unique plasticity. The sculpture is alert and defensive in character, with distortions and the interplay between glossy surfaces and the roughness of the metal serving as defining features that cover its entire form. This contrast accentuates both the strength and the nobility of this being.

Banca Transilvania Prize

Banca Transilvania strengthens its involvement in the 2025 edition of RAD Art Fair by directly supporting the local community of participating artists. This year, the bank is offering an acquisition prize for one of the works exhibited during the four-day fair—a gesture that not only acknowledges artistic excellence but also contributes to the sustainability of contemporary art practices in Romania.

Through this initiative, Banca Transilvania reinforces its ongoing commitment to the cultural field and affirms the role of private support in shaping a vibrant and enduring art ecosystem.

MNAC Prize by Stephan Stoyanov

RAD is happy to announce the inaugural National Museum of Contemporary Art of Romania (MNAC) Acquisition Prize, awarded by Stephan Stoyanov in 2025.

The prize is awarded to seven works by Adrian Piorescu from his “Evolution’s Consequences” series to Laika (2023), Ham (2023), and Apollo (2023) works.

“The National Museum of Contemporary Art of Romania, MNAC Bucharest, welcomes the initiative of RAD ART FAIR to create an award for young artists and thanks the team for the philanthropic mechanism through which a work by the awarded artist, purchased by a sponsor, will enter the Museum’s collection. This collaboration between the private, non-governmental, and public sectors in support of art is a sign of normalization in the context of Romania’s visual culture, and a hopeful signal for future such initiatives.

MNAC extends special thanks to Mr. Alex Radu for his persistence in bringing this project to life, and to Mr. Stephan Stoyanov, collector, who acquired for MNAC works by Adrian Piorescu. Piorescu is an artist we have followed since his earliest public appearances in the Laborna exhibitions. His name was also highlighted on the occasion of the Crama Oprișor Awards for Contemporary Drawing, and we are pleased to now include him in MNAC’s prestigious collection.”

Călin Dan on behalf of MNAC

RUS Collection Prize

The Rus Collection Prize 2025 is awarded to Left, Right, Right, Right (2018) by Rachel Monosov presented by Catinca Tabacaru Gallery.

The artist who weaves her personal history with the geo-political moment approaches the current global wave towards the political right.

As relevant today as when the work was first made in 2018, anti-immigrant governments call for tougher controls on migrant movements and the European Union’s internal border crossings become increasingly racialized spaces, constructed not only by border guards profiling according to race, but also by European citizens who witness these racialised control practices.

RUS Collection Prize

For a second year in a row, Bucharest-based RUS Collection awards an acquisition prize at RAD’s 3rd Edition. The artwork selected is a deep and personal reflection of the complex times we are living in today’s world order; much as the turn of cycles have inspired many of the masterworks in art history. In a world where direction and purpose are often difficult to identify, assess and preserve, art can serve as a silent (or sometimes quite loud) advisor.

Museum of Recent Art Prize

We’re thrilled to announce that the Museum of Recent Art (MARe) will be acquiring Viewfinder #10 by Aurora Király, represented by Anca Poterașu Gallery.

Aurora Király is an artist working at the intersection of photography with drawing, textile art or installations, exploring how the mind records, relives, remembers. She is particularly interested in exploring feminist theories in relation with identity-making and the status of women in society. Her works relates to complex connections between events, public and private sphere of experience.

In Viewfinder series, Aurora Király revisits an archive of her early photographic work captured nearly two decades ago, at the beginning of her career. These images are taken in her studio, during artist residencies, or while traveling. We observe her reflective gestures, her confronting gazes into the lens, her reflection, or her shadow taking center stage. Often, we catch a glimpse of the camera she is holding, a recurring detail that blurs the boundary between subject and observer. Through the medium of analog photography, the artist transforms her personal space into a site of exploration and artistic investigation.

The series invites a voyeuristic gaze to witness this intimate process. In the late 1990s, when these photos were taken, self-portraits were unaffected by the cultural shifts that the rise of selfies made widely accessible by digital technology — would later bring. These changes have profoundly altered the ways we construct and perceive identity within visual culture.

Be RAD Prize

Galeria Posibila wins the SO RAD Prize for their outstanding booth—a compelling solo presentation by Nicu Ilfoveanu (b. 1975, Pitești, Romania)—selection made and mounting imagined by Alexandra Mihali and Bianca Dragne with the close support of the artist.

The SO RAD Prize is awarded each year to the booth that is considered extraordinary, usually one mounted by a young gallery, or, as is the case here, curated by the younger team of a senior gallery. The selection is made by vote by RAD’s leading gallerists.
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Galeria Posibila says: The booth was a solo presentation by Nicu Ilfoveanu (b. 1975, Pitești, Romania), one of the best known artists of his generation, not only in photography, where he focuses on urban and human periphery, but also in the production of art books and design. The diversity of his interests still remains profoundly aesthetical and conceptual. His discourse on beauty is loaded with tension and reinterpretation, with the result that, in looking at his work, we are liable to lose ourselves in the history of image immortalisation. Documentary and personal at one and the same time, his art generates a new way of looking at photography in Romania.

The present booth selection, imagined by Alexandra Mihali and Bianca Dragne with the close support of the artist, acknowledges the previous work of various curators such as Ștefan Tiron, Alina Șerban, Claudio Hills, Solvej Ovesen, Marta Jecu, Marta Smolińska, Alexandra Mihai, and Anca Verona Mihuleț, all of whom offered different frameworks forg interpreting his works. Since 2003, the year Galeria Posibilă was founded, Nicu has been one of the gallery’s represented artists.