Art Project to offer new insights into BMW Group Plant Dingolfing. Body shop part of the innovative art work by Chinese artist Liu Xiaodong.

Dingolfing. As part of a collaborative project with ZKM | Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, Germany, BMW Group Plant Dingolfing will become the focus of an art project starting on September 8, 2017. Over the coming seven months, one of the plant’s robotic facilities for body shop will serve, alongside other sites, as basis for an installation created by Chinese artist Liu Xiaodong.

Digitalisation plays a vital role in both the body shop activities of BMW Group and the creative process of Liu Xiaodong. As such, the project exemplifies the importance of the power of innovation in both economics and art, and it aspires to create a new, aesthetic perspective to look at the industry and its manufacturing processes.

The vernissage at ZKM | Center for Art and Media on September 8, 2017, at 7 PM, will launch the months-long creative process necessary to develop the art work. Liu Xiaodong’s project is titled “Weight of Insomnia”. It includes three cameras which are installed all over Germany and directed at various motifs. Each camera sends one picture per every second to the exhibition space at ZKM | Center for Art and Media, where three robots will transcribe the collected data on movements with paint on canvas. A total of three individual art works will thus be created, each based on the various motifs captured by the cameras. The layers of paint will overlap as time goes by resulting in exceptionally dense compositions.

In addition to one camera at the robotic facilities for body shop at BMW Group Plant Dingolfing, two more cameras were installed, one at Berlin’s Academy of the Arts and the other at a traffic hub in Karlsruhe. The live art work will be on display at ZKM | Center for Art and Media from September 8, 2017, to March 18, 2018, where it will be shown as part of the “Datumsoria” exhibition.

Dr Andreas Wendt, director of BMW Group Plant Dingolfing, is thrilled about Liu Xiaodong’s project: “We at BMW Group Plant Dingolfing are very excited about this art project, which is offering the public at large entirely new insights into manufacturing processes. Digitalisation and innovative technologies move industry and art alike, and the artist’s installation is a unique expression thereof. I am deeply grateful to Liu Xiaodong and ZKM | Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe for making this visionary art work possible at our site.”

Liu Xiaodong is one of the most influential artists of the contemporary Chinese art world. In his large-scale works, he creates a balance of artistic image and reality while focusing on the challenges of our times such as digitalisation. Liu Xiaodong’s works are represented in renowned museums and art fairs worldwide.

With this project and following this year’s world premiere of the 18^th BMW Art Car by Chinese artist Cao Fei in Beijing, BMW Group continues its long-standing commitment to contemporary Chinese art.