BMW Art Journey artist shortlist announced during Art Basel in Hong Kong.

Hong Kong. Already in its third year Art Basel and BMW continue their joint initiative to recognize and support emerging artists worldwide with the announcement of the shortlist for the next BMW Art Journey during this year’s Art Basel in Hong Kong. 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's Hong Kong show:

Astha Butail at GALLERYSKE, Bangalore

Astha Butail, born in 1977 in Amritsar, India, lives and works in Gurgaon. Central to her artistic practice is the use of geometry as a means of inquiry to understand how different composite elements of an entity relate to its whole. Her themes are memory and time, the idea of the archive, and collaborative authorship. At this year’s Art Basel in Hong Kong, Butail is presenting her work titled “Turning towards pure white” (2017) including an assemblage of wall and floor based elements as well as framed panels, three-dimensional pieces extruded from the picture plane, and a participatory book. Butail’s debut solo exhibition was shown at GALLERYSKE, Bangalore. Recent group exhibitions include Experimenter, Kolkata, Devi Art Foundation, Gurgaon, and Masquelibros Artists’ Book Fair, Madrid. 

Julian Charrière at Dittrich & Schlechtriem, Berlin

Born in 1987 in Morges, Switzerland, Julian Charrière lives and works in Berlin. He studied at the Berlin University of Arts. Charrière’s artistic practice includes performance, sculpture, and photography. His projects often stem from fieldwork in remote locations with acute geophysical identities such as volcanoes, ice-fields, and radioactive sites. At Art Basel in Hong Kong Charrière is presenting his work “Coconut Lead Fondue” (2016), consisting of a series of large format photographs, two vitrine sculptures and an installation. Charrière’s solo exhibitions include Sean Kelly, New York, Sies + Höke, Dusseldorf, and Musée Cantonal Des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne. The artist has exhibited in recent group shows at KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna and will exhibit at the 2017 Biennale in Venice. 

Lin Ke at BANK, Shanghai

Born in 1984 in Wenzhou, China, Lin Ke lives and works in Beijing. He graduated from the New Media Arts Department of the China Academy of Art in 2008 and received the OCAT - Pierre Huber Art Prize in 2014 and the Chinese Youth Artist Award of the 9th AAC Art 2015. At Art Basel in Hong Kong, the artist is presenting “Like Me” (2016), a video recording of a performance and two image based works, showing his exploration of the variety of the World Wide Web, such as applications functioning as catalyst for making art and self-portraiture. Ke’s work has been exhibited at ZKM Zentrum für Kunst und Medien, Karlsruhe, Museum Folkwang, Essen, Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, Tokyo, and the 11th Shanghai Biennial, Shanghai.

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 2017.

The members of the expert jury in Hong Kong are:

Claire Hsu, Director, Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong

Bose Krishnamachari, President, Kochi-Muziris Biennale, India

Matthias Mühling, Director, Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus and Kunstbau, Munich

Alexandra Munroe, Senior Curator of Asian Art, and Senior Advisor, Global Arts, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York

Pauline J. Yao, Curator Visual Art, M+, Hong Kong

“This group represents the exceptionally strong selection of this year's Discoveries Sector, which was distinguished by the participation of adventurous young artists and galleries from around the globe. As a jury, we made a unanimous decision about the three shortlisted artists, while acknowledging the many powerful works and installations on display. These three artists represent a broad diversity of art practices—from photography, post-internet/digital aesthetics, and installation. Each artist is connected to a particular history, school, and tradition, and they come from very different parts of the world. We eagerly look forward to reading their proposals for the BMW Art Journey,” 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. 

During this year's show in Hong Kong, British artist Abigail Reynolds (represented by Rokeby, London), one of the BMW Art Journey winners in 2016, presents an installation of work made in response to her epic journey ‘The Ruins of Time: Lost Libraries of the Silk Road’. Reynolds’ journey took her to sites dating from 291 BC to 2011 including China, Egypt, Italy, Iran, Turkey, and Uzbekistan. Along the way, Reynolds gathered material in various forms including 16mm film, photography, microscopic imagery, written text, plans and cataloguing systems. Based on this extensive research, she has created a cluster of objects, structures and moving-image works, the latter being her first attempt to work in this medium on display in the BMW Lounge. Images, texts and other documents originating from the experience will be included in a book – thus completing a journey that both starts and ends with the institution of the library. 

The latest edition in the BMW Art Journey book series, 'For whom the Bell Tolls' is also presented at the fair. The book gives insights about Samson Young’s BMW Art Journey and contains the artist’s travel diary with personal reflections and descriptions of the locations he visited in twelve countries on five continents. Included in the volume is a suite of sound sketches evoking the acoustic landscape of the bells, along with a brochure for a multimedia walk Young staged during Art Basel's show in Hong Kong in 2016. 

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), who will represent Hong Kong at the 2017 Venice Biennale; 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 who was recently announced as the fourth winner (presented by High Art, Paris at Art Basel's Miami Beach show in 2016).

Launched in 2015, the BMW Art Journey is a global collaboration between Art Basel and BMW, which has been created to recognize and support emerging artists worldwide. The prize is open to artists who are showing in Discoveries and Positions in the Hong Kong and Miami Beach show respectively. Two judging expert panels, comprised of internationally renowned experts, shortlist three artists, who are then invited to submit proposals for a journey aimed to further develop their ideas and artistic work. For further information on the BMW Art Journey please visit: bmw-art-journey.com. 

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:

Dr Thomas Girst

BMW Group Corporate and Intergovernmental 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

Tel. +41 58 206 27 06, press@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. In 2014, Art Basel launched its Crowdfunding Initiative, in collaboration with Kickstarter. This initiative presents jury-selected art projects to potential benefactors, which include Art Basel’s vibrant audience and the Kickstarter community. The initiative has catalyzed much-needed support for outstanding non-commercial art projects worldwide and so far has helped pledge over $1.4 million to creative projects around the world. For Art Basel Cities, launched in 2016, Art Basel is working with selected partner cities to develop vibrant and content-driven programs specific to the individual city. Connecting them to the global art world through Art Basel's expertise and network, Art Basel Cities supports its partners to develop their unique cultural landscape. For further information please visit artbasel.com.  

About BMW Group’s Cultural Commitment

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. Currently, female artist Cao Fei from China and American John Baldessari are creating 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 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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