London. Between 22 – 31 March Tate Modern stages its
third annual BMW Tate Live Exhibition in the atmospheric subterranean
Tanks. Anne Imhof’s dynamic installation “Sex” is the first
project by a solo artist to occupy the full suite of spaces in the
Tanks. Anne Imhof is one of the most pioneering contemporary artists
of her generation, awarded in 2015 with the Preis der Nationalgalerie,
a long-term partner of BMW, and winner of the prestigious Golden Lion
at Venice Biennale in 2017.
The commission is both an exhibition by day and a series of six live
performances by night. Titled “Sex”, the work deals with
fluidity between binaries – female and male, top and bottom, night and
day – and the blurred line where two opposing zones meet. Structural
interventions splice through each of the grand spaces. In the South
Tank, visitors walk into the space on a raised platform, a scenario
mirrored in the East Tank where the hierarchy of viewing is reversed
and visitors are situated on the ground beneath a pier. The adjacent
Transformer galleries display a collection of Imhof’s Gradient and
Scratch paintings, alongside elements of sculpture that intervene in
the architecture.
Since 2012, Imhof has worked with a core group of collaborators from
diverse backgrounds to make her durational performances. During six
remarkable evenings at Tate Modern, they will inhabit the space while
interacting with each other and engaging with situations and objects
that serve as settings for their characters. Imhof doesn’t appear in
the work herself but is present, orchestrating the work and sending
notes and directions to her collaborators. Power dynamics between
performer and viewer are also a key component of “Sex”.
Viewing positions alternate between high and low, shifting
perspectives on the live tableaux. Performers also occupy an
inaccessible zone behind a glass partition in the East Tank, onto
which they paint. Although the structure and score of the live work is
carefully developed by Imhof, what happens within the four-hour
duration is dependent on the individuality and agency of the
performers, making each staging unique and unrepeatable.
Graeme Grieve, Chief Executive Officer, BMW Group UK and Ireland,
said: “Through our partnership with Tate Modern, BMW Tate Live
has developed into an innovative exhibition format which attracts the
world’s leading performance artists to London. We are delighted that
Anne Imhof will stage her exciting programme in the Tanks space in
March and look forward to another successful exhibition.”
Anne Imhof is renowned for staging complex performative projects over
long periods of time, such as “Faust”, an intense and
engaging installation created for the German pavilion at the 57th
Venice Biennale in 2017. The artist divided the interior with glass
partitions and floors inhabited by a choreographed group of
performers. Other recent projects have included “Angst”,
presented in three acts at Kunsthalle Basel, Hamburger Bahnhof –
Museum für Gegenwart – Berlin, and the Biennale de Montréal in 2016.
This year’s exhibition follows the success of the first two BMW Tate
Live Exhibitions in 2017 and 2018. These groundbreaking programs
pioneered a new model for the exhibition format with an ever-changing
series of installations and live performances across ten days. Taking
place in the Tanks, the world’s first museum spaces dedicated to
performance, film and installation, the BMW Tate Live Exhibitions have
showcased a wide range of artists including Joan Jonas, Fujiko Nakaya,
Isabel Lewis, Jason Moran, Mark Leckey, Jumana Emil Abboud, Wu Tsang
and Fred Moten.
BMW Tate Live Exhibition is curated by Catherine Wood, Isabella
Maidment and produced by Judith Bowdler.
“Sex” is the first of three chapters in a project
commissioned by Tate Modern, London, the Art Institute of Chicago, and
Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Rivoli-Turin.
About BMW Tate Live
BMW Tate Live is a major
international partnership between BMW and Tate, which aims to
foreground the pivotal role of live experimentation in art history and
among artists working today. The programme has now showcased over 50
artists including both emerging and more familiar figures from across
the world. It began in 2012 with the world’s first performance
programme created for live online broadcast, and evolved into an
ongoing series of performances at Tate Modern. As performance took on
an increasingly key role in Tate Modern’s vision for the future of the
museum, the first annual BMW Tate Live Exhibition was opened in the
Tanks in 2017. For further information, please visit tate.org.uk/bmwtatelive
About Anne Imhof
Anne Imhof (b. 1978) lives and
works in Berlin and Frankfurt am Main, Germany. She represented
Germany at the 2017 Venice Biennale, where she was awarded the Golden
Lion for best national participation, and has won the Absolut Art
Award (2017) and the Preis der Nationalgalerie (2015). Imhof’s
performances have been staged in solo exhibitions at major
international venues including the Hamburger Bahnhof, Biennale de
Montréal, Kunsthalle Basel and Portikus Frankfurt (2016), MoMA PS1,
New York (2015) and the Musée d’art contemporain, Nîmes (2014). Her
work has also been featured in numerous group exhibitions, including
at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris; the Centre Pompidou, Paris (2015); and
the Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt am Main (2014).
BMW Art Guide
The fifth edition of the BMW Art
Guide by Independent Collectors presents 270 private yet publicly
accessible collections of contemporary art — featuring large and
small, famous and the relatively unknown. Succinct portraits of the
collections with color photographs take the reader to forty-three
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For further questions please contact:
Doris
Fleischer
BMW Group Corporate and Governmental
Affairs
Cultural Engagement
Telephone: +49-151-601-27806
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
Duncan Holden
Senior Press
Officer, Tate
Telephone: +44-20-7887-4939
E-mail: pressoffice@tate.org.uk
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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With its four brands BMW, MINI,
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premium manufacturer of automobiles and motorcycles and also provides
premium financial and mobility services. The BMW Group production
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In 2018, the BMW Group sold over 2,490,000 passenger vehicles and
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