BMW celebrates 20 years of partnership with Paris Photo and support for emerging creatives. To mark this exceptional milestone, BMW is presenting the following from 10 – 13 November.

• The exhibition “Suburban Hauntology”, by the first winning duo in the BMW ART MAKERS cultural initiative dedicated to contemporary imagery and visual arts. Arash Hanaei and Morad Montazami explore the architecture and peripheral ecosystem of suburbs in the era of augmented reality and the metaverse.
• A retrospective of the ten BMW Residency laureates from 2011 to 2021, exhibiting works by these artists from BMW’s corporate collection.
• A selection of “20 favourites” from Paris Photo and its associated programme artists, by Thomas Girst – Head of BMW Group Cultural Engagement and art historian.
• The 7th edition of the BMW Art Guide by Independent Collectors.
• BMW supports the VIP programme and provides a fleet of electrified cars as shuttles for guests, artists and curators.

Paris. For over half a century, the BMW Group has resolutely maintained its cultural commitment throughout the world with long-term partnerships, such as the one initiated with the Paris Photo fair to support emerging creatives over the past 20 years.

“Having awarded prizes to artists supported by Paris Photo’s galleries as early as 2003, and then created the BMW Residency in 2011, BMW France launched the BMW ART MAKERS initiative last year, in order to address the societal and creative challenges of today, to keep our pioneering spirit, and to offer a place of free expression and encourage the emergence of talent,” says Vincent Salimon, CEO of BMW Group France.

In this period of rapid change, responsibility and reliability are of utmost importance, as is culture. Artistic cooperation has long been an integral part of the BMW Group’s approach to social responsibility and will remain so in the future.

To celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Paris Photo partnership, BMW is presenting a retrospective of the ten BMW Residency winners, a selection of 20 works (Thomas Girst’s 20 favourites) and a look into the future with the “Suburban Hauntology” exhibition by BMW ART MAKERS winners Arash Hanaei and Morad Montazami, which opens up new avenues.

“Suburban Hauntology”: an exhibition by artist Arash Hanaei and curator Morad Montazami – winners of the BMW ART MAKERS programme. BMW ART MAKERS is all about supporting emerging creatives such as Arash Hanaei and Morad Montazami, offering them research and production support and visibility among professionals and the general public. The exhibition created by the winning artist/curator duo is presented as part of the programme.

“Suburban Hauntology” questions the utopian architecture of the 1970s, including Jean Renaudie’s l’étoile building in Ivry-sur-Seine, while exploring new complex spaces such as the metaverse. How can these concrete ghosts be rehabilitated in the context of augmented reality? Combining several levels of text, still images, video and 3D design, the BMW ART MAKERS duo of Arash Hanaei and Morad Montazami put forward an immersive hybrid installation: digital drawings and big data drawings, a hologram extracted from the model of the building, the video Unblocked Avatars, and a virtual game of chess between Mark Zuckerberg and the philosopher Mark Fischer. It is when the future becomes unimaginable that it becomes possible again.

The exhibition will be presented at the Paris Photo fair at the Grand Palais Ephémère on 10 – 13 November 2022. It was also shown at Les Rencontres d’Arles this summer.

RETROSPECTIVE OF THE TEN BMW RESIDENCY LAUREATES.
Marking 20 years of its partnership with Paris Photo, BMW offers a retrospective of the ten BMW Residency laureates under the artistic direction of Francois Cheval at the Niepce Museum in Chalon-sur-Saône and then at the GOBELINS school of visual arts. This residency allows us to highlight the emergence of contemporary photography in different forms through the winning projects. The creatives involved benefited from artistic, technical, educational, and material support. Visitors will be able to (re)discover the work of the ten winners through an exhibition of their work taken from the company’s collection.

Biographies of the laureates:
2011 : Alexandra Catière
2012 : Marion Gronier
2013 : Mazaccio & Drowilal
2014 : Natasha Caruana
2015 : Alinka Echeverria
2016 : Dune Varela
2017 : Baptiste Rabichon
2018 : Emeric Lhuisset
2019 : Lewis Bush
2020 : Almudena Romero

Florence Bourgeois, director of Paris Photo: “We are particularly proud to have been associated with BMW for 20 years. BMW’s remarkable commitment to the artists is a testament to the major interest they have in the medium of photography and its evolution. To mark the occasion, the ten winners of the BMW Residency will be presented at Paris Photo, as well as in a publication that lists BMW’s 20 favourites – both at the fair and in the associated ‘In Paris during Paris Photo’ programme.”

20 YEARS, 20 FAVOURITES OF THOMAS GIRST.
Thomas Girst, Head of BMW Group Cultural Engagement and art historian, shares his 20 favourites from the works exhibited in the galleries of Paris Photo and its associated “In Paris during Paris Photo” programme: "In 1922, Marcel Duchamp was asked by Alfred Stieglitz whether photography was art, to which he replied: ‘I would like to see it make people despise painting until something else will make photography unbearable.’ 100 years later, many artists exhibiting at Paris Photo employ this ‘something else’ – digitalisation, cutting-edge technology, new modes of narration – to ensure that photography still matters today and to keep it relevant as a meaningful and creative form of expression. Celebrating 20 years of partnership with Paris Photo, BMW is proud to engage with this development, supporting artists and their platforms alike.”

The list and the reasons for choosing these 20 favourites will be available in the BMW space during the fair and on social media (@bmwgroupculture_fr and Paris Photo).

BMW Art Guide by Independent Collectors.
In 2012, BMW teamed up with Independent Collectors, an international community and publishing platform dedicated to contemporary art. Together with Hatje Cantz, they launched a one-of-a-kind exploration of private collections accessible to the public worldwide – the BMW Art Guide by Independent Collectors. Its 7th edition will be presented at Paris Photo and introduces 304 private collections of contemporary art — featuring large and small, the famous and the relatively unknown. Succinct portraits of the collections with colour photographs take the reader to 51 countries and 224 cities, and often to regions that are off the beaten track.
https://bmw-art-guide.com/

CALL FOR APPLICATIONS FOR THE 2nd EDITION OF THE BMW ART MAKERS.
Dedicated to supporting emerging creatives in the field of visual arts and contemporary imagery, the BMW ART MAKERS initiative awards a grant to an artist-curator duo – 10,000 euros to the artist and 8,000 euros to the curator – plus a budget of 15,000 euros for research and production, for them to conceive and create an artistic project. The collaborative bond between the duo provides the foundations for the trust and teamwork essential to the success of a large-scale project. Working alongside the artist, the curator also plays a fundamental role in the implementation of the project.

Applications for the second edition can be submitted up to 22 November 2022 at www.bmw-art-makers.plateformecandidature.com/