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Built in 1835, Le Meurice was the first of the Parisian palaces, and art and creation have always been at the heart of the hotel. The Meurice Prize for Contemporary Art is a non-profit competition that allows the career of an up-and-coming French artist to progress on an increasingly competitive international stage. The prize of €20,000 was awarded by a jury of professionals to Renaud Auguste-Dormeuil and the gallery In Situ, for the project "Black Out" by a jury of professionals. This jury was made up of Jean Charles de Castelbajac, Ambassador for the Award, Henri Loyrette, Chairman and Director of the Louvre Museum, Marta Gili, Director of the Musée du Jeu de Paume, Jennifer Flay, Artistic Director of the FIAC, Colette Barbier, Director of the Ricard Corporate Foundation, Marc-Olivier Wahler, Director of the Palais de Tokyo, Montse Aguer, Director of the Centre for Dalinian Studies, Philippe Dagen, Writer and Lecturer at Paris I University and Franka Holtmann, General Manager of Le Meurice. This project, which was awarded by the jury, was elected among more than 50 presentations of exceptional files. The project "Black Out" can be both a city-wide power failure and momentary loss of memory caused by a traumatic experience. This project investigates the possibility of using drakness rather than light to create an image in an enclosed space which functions as a reverse camera obscura. The project involves blacking out all the lights in two major capital cities - New York and Tokyo - seen from a panoramic viewpoint at night. The artist creates a map by placing black stickers on a plate of glass to conceal every point of light. This map is then "frozen" by taking a photograph of the glass in daylight... a process not unlike late nineteenth-century glass negatives. Black Out will be presented as a solo show at the Armory Show 2010 in New York or as a statement piece at Art Basel 2010. Born in 1968, Renaud Auguste-Dormeuil lives in Paris. The unilateral wielding of power and viewpoint are recurrent themes in the work of Renaud Auguste-Dormeuil. Much of this work focuses on communication technologies, as a critical reflection on their use. His work is neither a record nor a photograph in the strict sense of the term any more than it is pure scientific modelling. Each has the ambiguous charm of something which cannot be defined, refusing to be contained within the narrow framework of any label. The creation of the Meurice Prize for Contemporary Art accompanies the hotel into the future, with the luxury of Le Meurice being expressed through creativity.