Next BMW Art Journey artist shortlist announced during Art Basel in Hong Kong. Ali Kazim, Zac Langdon-Pole and Gala Porras-Kim are nominated.

Hong Kong. The joint initiative of Art Basel and BMW to recognize and support emerging artists worldwide is continued 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:

Ali Kazim at Jhaveri Contemporary, Mumbai
Ali Kazim (b. 1979) lives and works in Lahore, Pakistan. He received his Master of Fine Arts from the Slade School of Fine Art, London. Ali Kazim forms multi-layered compositions to create uniquely textured paintings that include elements of narrative and fantasy. He works meticulously in watercolor and graphite, using techniques acquired from studying the watercolor wash and miniature painting techniques of the Bengal and Mughal schools. At this year’s Art Basel show in Hong Kong, the artist presents an immersive installation that draws a primary inspiration from the landscape around his hometown of Lahore. Kazim will participate in the 9th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, opening in November 2018 in Brisbane.

Zac Langdon-Pole at Michael Lett, Auckland
Zac Langdon-Pole (b. 1988) lives and works in Berlin, Germany. He studied at Elam School of Fine Arts, Auckland and at the Städelschule, Frankfurt. In his work he uses paper nautilus shells, fragile egg-case-shells, made by the genus of Octopedes known as Argonauts, and unique fragments of Meteorite handcrafted to fill the shell’s aperture. At this year’s edition of Art Basel in Hong Kong, Langdon-Pole is presenting an installation of new sculptures that form a poetic exploration of identity and belonging. In 2017, he was awarded the Ars Viva Prize for young artists living in Germany. Recent exhibitions include Between Bridges, Berlin; Ars Viva 2018, Berlin; S.M.A.K. Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Ghent and Kunstverein München, Munich.

Gala Porras-Kim at Commonwealth and Council, Los Angeles
Gala Porras-Kim (b.1984) lives and works in Los Angeles, United States. She received a Master of Fine Arts from California Institute of Fine Arts and a Master of Arts in Latin American Studies from University of California, Los Angeles. Her work questions the social and political contexts that influence the manifestation and interpretation of language and history. Her artistic approach comes from a research-based practice that aims to reconsider how intangible subjects have been represented in the fields of linguistics, history, and conservation. At this year's Art Basel show in Hong Kong Porras-Kim is presenting a group of artifacts that reconstruct and reimagine ambiguous historical fragments from various ethnographic institutions. Her work was displayed at solo exhibitions at Commonwealth and Council, Los Angeles and LABOR, Mexico City. Recently she has been included in group exhibitions at Seoul Museum of Art and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

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 2018.

The members of the expert jury in Hong Kong are:
Richard Armstrong, Director, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation, New York 
Claire Hsu, Director, Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong
Bose Krishnamachari, President, Kochi-Muziris Biennale, India
Matthias Mühling, Director, Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus und Kunstbau, Munich
Pauline J. Yao, Curator, Visual Art M+, Hong Kong

“As jury, we were impressed by the variety and quantity of works and made a unanimous decision about the three shortlisted artists. In this year’s edition of BMW Art Journey at Art Basel in Hong Kong, the jurors noticed a wide search for narrative with a mostly consistent search for ’fact’. Within the project the number of eligible galleries was by far the greatest, representing artists of the most diverse backgrounds. We admired Ali Kazim’s meditative approach to the desolate landscape of Pakistan, and found his labor-intensive process combining miniature painting techniques with a contemporary sensibility to be layered and haunting. Zac Langdon-Pole’s work ‘Passport (Argonauta)’ creates a poetical and surprising combination of materials. Proposing a new notion of the passport, the nautilus shell and meteorites from different parts of the world suggesting a metaphysical and timeless idea of identities. We appreciated Gala Porras-Kim’s investigation into and imagination of ways in which objects within institutional collections undergo re-interpretation via changing social and physical contexts. She touches on the subjectivity of history and the endless possibilities of making meaning of fragments and traces.” 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 Art Basel show in Hong Kong, the 2017 winner of the BMW Art Journey from the Discoveries sector, Astha Butail (represented by GALLERYSKE, New Dehli, Bangalore), presents insights into her project “In the Absence of Writing” at the BMW Lounge. Throughout her journey, the artist visited Yazd (Iran), Jerusalem (Israel), London (United Kingdom), Varanasi, Pune, New Delhi and Mumbai (India) to discover memories and living traditions that are passed down through teaching and oral poetry. For the BMW Art Journey, Butail investigates the Zoroastrian Avesta, Jewish Oral Torah and Indian Veda traditions by observing and recording their different memory techniques and interviewing scholars and practitioners of each tradition.

Furthermore, for the first time after its race at the FIA GT World Cup in Macau, the BMW Art Car #18, designed by Chinese multimedia artist Cao Fei, is exhibited in the BMW Lounge at Art Basel in Hong Kong.

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 (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) and Jamal Cyrus (represented by Inman Gallery, Houston at Art Basel’s Miami Beach show in 2017).

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.

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
Telephone: +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 which catalyzed much-needed support for outstanding non-commercial art projects worldwide and helped garner pledges in excess of USD 2 million in support of around 70 art projects from around the globe – from Bogota to Ho Chi Minh City, San José and Kabul. 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. 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 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 for granted – as this is as essential for producing groundbreaking artistic work as it is for major innovations in a successful business.

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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 31 production and assembly facilities in 14 countries; the company has a global sales network in more than 140 countries.

In 2017, the BMW Group sold over 2,463,500 passenger vehicles and more than 164,000 motorcycles worldwide. The profit before tax in the financial year 2016 was approximately € 9.67 billion on revenues amounting to € 94.16 billion. As of 31 December 2016, the BMW Group had a workforce of 124,729 employees.

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