Hong Kong. Art Basel and BMW are delighted to present
the 2019 artist shortlist for the BMW Art Journey, a joint initiative
recognizing and supporting emerging artists worldwide. Like a mobile
studio, the BMW Art Journey can take artists almost anywhere in the
world to develop new ideas and envision new creative projects.
Today, an international expert jury announced the following
shortlist of three artists showing in Discoveries, the sector for
emerging artists, at Art Basel in Hong Kong:
Clarissa Tossin
at Commonwealth and Council, Los Angeles
Clarissa Tossin (b. 1973) lives and works in
Los Angeles, United States. She received her Master of Fine Arts from
the California Institute of the Arts. In her artistic practice, Tossin
uses installation, video, performance, sculpture, and photography. For
this year’s edition of Art Basel in Hong Kong, Tossin is pairing DIY
plastic recycling techniques with the materials and practices of
Amazonian aesthetic traditions, highlighting the contemporary
footprint left in the geological sedimentation of the earth. The
artist has had exhibitions at Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study
at Harvard University, Cambridge and Sicardi Gallery, Houston. Her
work was also included in group shows at Whitney Museum of American
Art, New York; and Hammer Museum, Los Angeles.
Lu Yang at Société, Berlin
Lu Yang (b. 1984) is a Shanghai-based multi-media
artist, who graduated from the New Media Art Department of the China
Academy of Art. Deeply immersed in the subcultures of anime, video
games, and Science-Fiction, the output of her artistic practice spans
3D-animated films, video game-like installations, holograms, neon, VR
and software manipulation, often with overt Japanese manga and anime
references. For Art Basel in Hong Kong, Lu Yang has created unique
fantasies highlighting the fragility of humankind. Departing from
Buddhist teachings that propagate a genderless society, she exploits
her own images as a vehicle to reproduce asexual visions of
herself. Her work was displayed in exhibitions at Centre Pompidou,
Paris; M Woods, Beijing; Shanghai Biennale; and Athens Biennale.
Shen Xin at Madeln Gallery, Shanghai
Shen Xin (b. 1990) lives and works in London, United
Kingdom, and Amsterdam, Netherlands. She received her Master of Fine
Arts in Media at The Slade School of Fine Arts of the University
College London. Through films and video installations, as well as
performative events, Shen Xin’s practice examines and fabricates
techniques and effects of how emotion, judgment and ethic circulate
through individual and collective subjects. At this year’s edition
of Art Basel in Hong Kong, the artist presents “Commerce des Esprits”,
a four-channel video installation bringing the perspectives and
productivities of comparative philosophy into an event which narrates
an unconscious state. Recent solo exhibitions include K11 Art
Foundation, Shanghai, and Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art,
Manchester. Her work has been on display at group exhibitions
including OCAT Shanghai; and Julia Stoschek Collection, Dusseldorf.
These three shortlisted artists are now invited to develop a
proposal for their ideal journey, with the winner to be announced in
the early summer of 2019.
The members of the expert jury in Hong Kong are:
Claire Hsu, Director Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong
Matthias Mühling, Director Städtische Galerie im
Lenbachhaus, Munich
Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, President
Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin
Philip Tinari, Director Ullens Center for
Contemporary Art (UCCA), Beijing
Samson Young, artist and winner of the first BMW Art Journey
“We had a very diverse group of artists who encompass a variety
of media,” noted the jury in making its unanimous decision. “All of
them engage important issues and are operating in contexts or in
stages of their careers that will allow them to benefit from this
incredible opportunity. We believe that the three selected artists
have great potential to conceive a journey that will positively impact
their research, their work, and their professional growth.
Shen Xin has distinguished herself with expansive, curious,
poetic works that generally take the form of complex, multi-channel
video narratives. She explores contemporary subjectivities by delving
into histories, philosophies, and psychologies as embedded in
different cultures, genders, and other identities. Her
research-intensive, project-based way of working struck the jury as
particularly suited to the nature of the Art Journey. Lu
Yang is a Shanghai based artists who creates frenetic
multimedia installations. Her works combine images with references
from religion, manga, anime or pop culture. Her fast moving colorful
images show both entertaining and deeply intellectual visions of our
contemporary culture. At a time when we are facing the extinction of
animals and plants on a daily basis, Clarissa Tossin
asks us to reflect on the future of our planet and humanity by drawing
on traditional weaving processes from the Amazon region and mass
produced materials. Both true alluring and beautiful, her works also
conjures a future unknown – both apocalyptic and utopian – and asks us
to imagine what imprint our current mass consumption will have on
future generations”, states the jury.
In collaboration with the winning artist, the journey will be
documented and shared with the public through publications, online and
social media.
Past winners of the BMW Art Journey include sound and
performance artist Samson Young (presented by a.m.
Space, Hong Kong at Art Basel’s Hong Kong show in 2015); German video
artists Henning Fehr and Philipp Rühr (presented by
Galerie Max Mayer, Dusseldorf at Art Basel’s Miami Beach show in
2015); British artist Abigail Reynolds (presented by
Rokeby, London at Art Basel’s show in Hong Kong in 2016) as well as
Max Hooper Schneider (presented by High Art, Paris
at Art Basel’s Miami Beach show in 2016), Astha
Butail (represented by GALLERYSKE, New Dehli, Bangalore at
Art Basel´s Hong Kong show in 2017), Jamal Cyrus
(represented by Inman Gallery, Houston at Art Basel’s Miami Beach show
in 2017) and Zac Langdon-Pole (represented by Michael
Lett, Auckland at Art Basel’s Hong Kong show in 2018).
Launched in 2015, the BMW Art Journey is a collaboration between
Art Basel and BMW, created to recognize and support emerging artists
worldwide. This unique award is open to artists who are exhibiting in
the Discoveries sector during Art Basel in Hong Kong. A judging panel
comprised of internationally renowned experts meet first to select a
shortlist of three artists from the sector, who are then invited to
submit proposals for a journey aimed to further develop their ideas
and artistic work. The jury reconvenes to choose a winner from the
three proposals. For further information on the BMW Art Journey please
visit: bmw-art-journey.com.
During this year’s Art Basel show in Hong Kong the latest
awardee Zac Langdon-Pole (represented by Michael
Lett, Auckland) will be on the ground in Hong Kong for the
documentation of his BMW Art Journey project “Sutures of the
Sky”. His journey took him across a world that humans and
birds have been navigating through millennia. He followed the flight
paths of birds like the white stork or the arctic tern, traveling
along the earth’s axis where the Northern and Southern Hemispheres’
summers intersect. Migrating birds cover some of the longest distances
traveled by any living being. Their routes have guided the Polynesian
pathfinders across the seas. Inspired by this ancient celestial
tracing, Langdon-Pole’s journey questions the position of humans as
the center of the world. Weaving through Central Europe, Southern
Africa, and the Pacific Islands of Samoa and Hawaii, his BMW Art
Journey seeks to understand how culture intersects with the science of
celestial mapping – and from there flows into larger existential
inquiries about who we are and how we are situated in the world.
Furthermore, the world’s first BMW Art Car (BMW
3.0 CSL, 1975), created by legendary artist Alexander
Calder, will be presented in the BMW Lounge at the Hong Kong
Convention and Exhibition Centre.
BMW has supported Art Basel’s shows in Basel, Miami Beach and
Hong Kong as a long-term partner for many years.
For further questions please contact:
Prof. Dr Thomas Girst
BMW Group Corporate and
Governmental Affairs
Head of Cultural
Engagement
Telephone: +49 89 382 24753
www.press.bmwgroup.com
E-Mail: presse@bmw.de
Dorothee Dines
Art Basel Global
Head of Media
Relations
Telephone: + 41 58 206 27 06
Email: dorothee.dines@artbasel.com
About Art Basel
Founded in 1970 by gallerists from Basel, Art Basel
today stages the world’s premier art shows for Modern and contemporary
art, sited in Basel, Miami Beach and Hong Kong. Defined by its host
city and region, each show is unique, which is reflected in its
participating galleries, artworks presented, and the content of
parallel programming produced in collaboration with local institutions
for each edition. Art Basel’s engagement has expanded beyond art fairs
through a number of new initiatives such as Art Basel Cities, working
with partner cities on bespoke cultural programs. For further
information, please visit artbasel.com.
About BMW Group Cultural Engagement
For almost
50 years now, the BMW Group has initiated and engaged in over 100
cultural cooperations worldwide. The company places the main focus of
its long-term commitment on contemporary and modern art, classical
music and jazz as well as architecture and design. In 1972, three
large-scale paintings were created by the artist Gerhard Richter
specifically for the foyer of the BMW Group’s Munich headquarters.
Since then, artists such as Andy Warhol, Jeff Koons, Daniel Barenboim,
Jonas Kaufmann and architect Zaha Hadid have co-operated with BMW. In
2016 and 2017, female artist Cao Fei from China and American John
Baldessari created the next two vehicles for the BMW Art Car
Collection. Besides co-initiatives, such as BMW Tate Live, the BMW Art
Journey and the “Opera for All” concerts in Berlin, Munich, Moscow and
London, the company also partners with
leading museums and art fairs as well as orchestras and opera houses
around the world. The BMW Group takes absolute creative freedom in all
its cultural activities – as this initiative is as essential for
producing groundbreaking artistic work as it is for major innovations
in a successful business.
Further information: www.bmwgroup.com/culture
and www.bmwgroup.com/culture/overview
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#BMWGroupCulture
The BMW Group
With its four brands BMW, MINI,
Rolls-Royce and BMW Motorrad, the BMW Group is the world’s leading
premium manufacturer of automobiles and motorcycles and also provides
premium financial and mobility services. The BMW Group production
network comprises 30 production and assembly facilities in 14
countries; the company has a global sales network in more than 140 countries.
In 2018, the BMW Group sold over 2,490,000 passenger vehicles
and more than 165,000 motorcycles worldwide. The profit before tax in
the financial year 2018 was € 9.815 billion on revenues amounting to
€ 97.480 billion. As of 31 December 2018, the BMW Group had a
workforce of 134,682 employees.
The success of the BMW Group has always been based on long-term
thinking and responsible action. The company has therefore established
ecological and social sustainability throughout the value chain,
comprehensive product responsibility and a clear commitment to
conserving resources as an integral part of its strategy.
www.bmwgroup.com
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