BMW Art Journey artist shortlist announced during Art Basel in Hong Kong 2019. Clarissa Tossin, Lu Yang and Shen Xin are nominated.

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.

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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.

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