We are proud to announce that two KABK graduates, Tom Allsop and Viktor Dimitrov Marinopolsky are among the winners of this year's Ron Mandos Best of Graduates awards.
Tom Allsop and Viktor Dimitrov Marinopolsky, who both graduated from Bachelor Fine Art this year, were presented with their awards at Galerie Ron Mandos in Amsterdam by Michael Huijser, Director of the Mondriaan Fund.
Ron Mandos Young Blood Award winner
Tom Allsop won the prestigious Ron Mandos Young Blood Award for his series Numbering Pools. Allsop's practice explores the tension between mechanical reproduction and craftsmanship, painstakingly recreating mechanically produced images with his own hand. Through this process he questions the value placed upon these seemingly oppositional modes of production.
Reproduction itself becomes an aesthetic condition. The quiet failures that occur through repetition, when an image is pushed toward uniformity but never arrives. Tools for repeated accuracy and structure, regulate movement and discipline the hand. Asking it to perform a mechanical gesture through repetition and restraint.
As the hand adapts, it begins to mimic the machine. Gesture becomes learned, rehearsed, and efficient. Yet this conformity is unstable. The body resists full alignment. Fatigue, impatience, and restlessness accumulate, allowing subtle variations to surface. These deviations are not interruptions but evidence: the human emerging from a framework designed to suppress it. - Tom Allsop
A number of Allsop's works will enter the collection of Museum Voorlinden in Wassenaar, donated by the Ron Mandos Young Blood Foundation.
Gattopardo Residency Award
Viktor Dimitrov Marinopolsky won the Gattopardo Residency Award. His work delves into the intimacy of watching and being observed. Using memory as a medium he makes his drawings after intensive face-to-face sessions, thus creating a portrait of two halves — the sitter themselves, and his own subjective memory. As his prize, Viktor will participate in a fully funded six-week residency in Liguria, Italy that concludes with a public presentation in the historic town of Cairo Montenotte.
A love letter sometimes contains more love than lack, but always contains more pain than love.I am always elsewhere — in fantasies, memories, daydreams — thinking of a past that could've been different or a future that will never happen, split between fiction and reality, not fully present in either of them. The line between these two is supposedly closest to who or where I truly am.
In attempts to locate that line, so I could send myself a love letter, I'm exploring different ways of looking at myself (mostly through lines) (mostly in between them.) - Viktor Dimitrov Marinopolsky
Congratulations to all the Best of Graduates 2026!
This year KABK lead the pack with 8 nominations. As well as Tom and Viktor these were: Aga Rymuszka, Hara Ghan, Iivari Mikkonen, Kimia Khedri, Minnie Fawcett-Tang and Tobias Nap, who also exhibited their work at Galerie Ron Mandos.
We are super proud of all our KABK winners and nominees!
