Guts instead of Glamour – Young Art for Berlin

Every two years, four young international artists based in Berlin compete as finalists for the trophy, which is endowed with 50,000 Euros. The award is modelled on Britain's Turner prize, which regularly creates a sensation with daring new artworks and artists. This time, two women and two men were shortlisted for the prize. Jeanne Faust doesn't make it easy for the viewer. In her video, a father and son take part in a bizarre dialogue behind the glass pane of a sound studio. Aggression is in the air, although the reason for it remains mysterious.

In Tino Sehgal's performance piece, six people talk at cross purposes with each other and with museum-goers. Both works deal with disrupted communication.

Mexican artist Damián Ortega explores spaces – this time in Berlin. He was immediately taken by the city: "When I came here, I was surprised by the large number of abandoned sites, spaces where something had once existed and that had a story." From this surprise, he created an enchanting work: bricks lined up like dominoes falling across a weather-beaten, overgrown plot of land.

British artist Ceal Floyer presented a stairway made of loudspeakers, from which footsteps resounded one at a time, endlessly ascending and descending. She said of her work, "The simpler, the better," and that simplicity won her the 2007 Nationalgalerie Prize for Young Art.