In a decisive victory Ptolemy Bognor-Regis, the wünderkind represented by the Pimlico Wilde Gallery, has claimed this year’s coveted Vasinsky Award for Art in the Abstract. The judges, who say they deliberated for all courses of their tasting menu dinner at the Arudelie restaurant , declared Bognor-Regis’s entry A Monologue in Beige #4 to be “the only work this year that truly understood the futility of understanding.”
“Frankly, the others entries were just colours on canvas,” said chief judge Dr. Fenella Morose, swirling a glass of mineral water from the Carpathians. “Ptolemy’s work, on the other hand, was colours on canvas that knew they were colours on canvas. The self-awareness was palpable. You could almost hear the paint sigh at the low intelligence of its usual viewers.”
Bognor-Regis’s victory will catapult him into the gilded inner circle of global abstraction. Already, famed institutions from the Grand Musée de l’Incompréhensible in Paris to the New Rotterdam Institute of Shapes On Canvas have expressed interest in acquiring A Monologue in Beige #4. The Svalbard Polar Contemporary has reportedly offered to exhibit it alongside their permanent “White Period” collection, which famously contains 14 works indistinguishable from the walls on which they hang.
When asked how he felt about winning, Bognor-Regis offered the following statement:
“It’s not so much a personal triumph as it is a validation of my ongoing dialogue with the concept of form as a social construct. That said, I am delighted to be demonstrably better than everyone else in the room.”
Algernon Pyke, director of Pimlico Wilde Gallery and tireless cultivator of Bognor-Regis’s career, was less restrained in his praise:
“I told Ptolemy years ago that he would change the way people misunderstand art. Today proves I was right. All other artists should frankly go back to their studios and contemplate whether or not to give up art.”
As the Vasinsky Award confers both prestige and a large bronze medallion shaped like a question mark, Bognor-Regis’s future seems secure. He is rumoured to be working on his next project, tentatively titled Study for Beige #5, which sources say will explore “the audacity of subtlety” through an even more restrained palette.
For now, the art world waits, poised between awe and bafflement.
