BMW Proudly partners with Art Basel in Hong Kong for the 4th Year
Inaugural BMW Art Journey Winning-Artist Samson Young’s Sound Journey
“So You Are Old by the Time You Reach the Island”
#2 BMW Art Car by Frank Stella (1976).
#bmwartcar #animateyourlife #bmwartjourney #bmwhk
The BMW Group has been a patron of arts and culture around the world for over forty years, and this year, BMW is once again a proud partner of the top modern and contemporary art show in Asia – Art Basel in Hong Kong. For the 4th year as a partner, BMW highlights the latest work of Samson Young – Hong Kong based artist and the inaugural BMW Art Journey winner – “For Whom the Bell Tolls”. Young will also premiere another artwork “So You Are Old by the Time You Reach the Island” multi-media walk tomorrow (24 March 2016). Furthermore, BMW displayd the BMW Art Car designed by American artist Frank Stella at their lounge on Level 3 Concourse of the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre. As second “rolling sculpture” in the collection, Stella’s BMW Art Car celebrates its 40th anniversary this year, being designed in 1976 – just one year after Alexander Calder had created the series’ founding model. The BMW Lounge also features an interactive zone “Animate Your Life”, where visitors can take photos with the BMW Art Car and create a dynamic GIF file using digital technology.
Today, BMW has a media announcement of the shortlist of artists, which are Abigail Reynolds,Newsha Tavakolian and Alvin Zafra. The winner will be announced in early summer 2016. Besides, BMW also participates in this year’s Art Basel in Hong Kong as the event’s Official Automotive Partner, escorting VIP guests during the event in a fleet of luxurious all-new BMW 7 Series sedans.
BMW Art Journey: Display of Samson Young’s Project “For Whom the Bell Tolls”.
Launched last year, the BMW Art Journey is a new global art initiative by BMW and Art Basel offering artists an opportunity to undertake a journey of creative discovery.
BMW Art Car (#02 by Frank Stella)
CNN’s global portal identified Samson Young as one of the “Top 20 People to Watch in Hong Kong” and in 2013 he was named “Best Artist of the Year” in the Media Art category by the Hong Kong Arts Development Council. Last year, his project “For Whom the Bell Tolls” won him the inaugural BMW Art Journey. The project has become the exhibition highlight in the BMW Lounge. Graduated from Princeton University with a Ph.D. in Music Composition, Young studied culture and philosophy. For his BMW Art Journey he chose iconic bells from various cultures and religions as his central theme. In the time before modern communication technology, bells served as an important means of communication. The auditory coverage of bells also defined territories; the abduction of bells on the other hand – often involving violent conflicts – aroused fierce animosities, and individual’s sense of belonging is greatly disturbed by such events. On his 60-day journey, Young traversed 11 countries in five continents: Austria (Vienna and Innsbruck), USA (LA & Clemson University), Australia (Darlington Point), Kenya (Mombasa), Morocco (Fez), Sicily (Licata), St. Petersburg, France (Cantal), Germany (Nuremberg) & Poland (Bydgoszcz), London and Myanmar (Mandalay).
“All the bells I recorded on my trip have a connection with conflict. In history writing, for example, the sounds of war are seldom described or recorded. That may be because sound is pure experience which doesn’t convey any information or hard facts. Yet it is sound that actually transports us into the midst of events.” Young compiled an extensive archive of bell recordings and a series of bell sound sketches on paper. Visitors of the BMW Lounge can explore sound samples of Young’s archive generously supported by Bowers & Wilkins headphones.
BMW Art Car (#02 by Frank Stella)
Exclusive Multi-Media Walk – “So You Are Old by the Time You Reach the Island”.
Samson Young will premiere another artwork resulting from his research undertaken on his journey: “So You Are Old by the Time You Reach the Island”, a multi-media walk that will lead participants on a journey through the streets of Admiralty and Wan Chai districts in Hong Kong. Offering a time and site-specific experience, the work weaves together institutional histories of place with fictions and personal narratives, all through films, audio tracks, on-site FM radio broadcasts, live actions, and installation elements dispersed along the route. Each participant will receive a portable media player and Bowers & Wilkins headphones along with a bag holding various small objects, maps and instructions necessary to complete the journey. Walking individually or in groups, over the course of the next hour the participants will be led to a series of iconic and obscure locations in Hong Kong, where they will experience pre-recorded films and sounds, live actions and performances that had been painstakingly orchestrated by Samson Young and his performers and collaborators, including jazz vocalist Michael Schiefel, who contributed many of his original songs and plays one of the many mysterious characters that the audience will encounter during this walk.
“So You Are Old by the Time You Reach the Island” Multi-Media Walk
Date: March 24, 2016 (Thursday, tomorrow)
Time: 1:15pm – 7:30pm (45 minutes/session)
Start: BMW Exhibition, 3/F Lobby, HKCEC
There are eight sessions of the multi-media walking journey, each lasting about 45 minutes; the sessions start at 1:15pm, 2:30pm, 3:45pm, 5:00pm, 6:15pm, and 7:30pm.
Each visitor is limited to one registration, and please arrive 15 minutes in advance of the registered time.
Prior registration is required; please register online to reserve your appointment: www.bmw–art-journey.com/events/samsonyoung.
Timeless BMW Art Car #02 by Frank Stella.
Since 1975, renowned artists have been letting their creativity run loose using BMW vehicles as their canvas. The BMW Art Car Collection now contains 17 unique pieces, each of them designed by world-renowned artists. Every year, BMW Group selects one vehicle from the Collection to be displayed at Art Basel in Hong Kong; this year, BMW presents the #02 BMW Art Car, designed by American minimalist artist Frank Stella in 1976. Having been subjected to a grueling Le Mans 24-hour race, Stella devised a black and white design based on oversize graph paper on the BMW classic racecar BMW 3.0 CSL. Stella considers his design is a kind of blueprint applied to the entire body of the car, through which the aesthetics of the vehicle structure can be fully expressed and appreciated.
Frank Stella
One of the most important artists from the United States – Frank Stella – is renowned for his avant-garde minimalist and post-painterly abstractionist works.
Born on May 12, 1936, Frank Stella is an American painter and graphic artist best known for his minimalist and post-painterly abstractionist artwork. Hailing from Massachusetts, he began studying art at the Phillips Academy in Andover at the tender age of 14, and went on to study history at Princeton. After this, he set up a studio in New York and gradually developed his minimalist style.
An exhibition of his work was held at the Museum of Modern Art at the young age of 23. In the 1960s, he began working with metallic paint and deviated from the rectangular canvas using aluminum and copper surfaces as his canvases, for which he was given critical acclaim. Between the 1960’s to 1980s, Stella’s work was displayed around the world, and became hotly pursued on the market and at various auctions. Now at the age of 79, Stella insists on continuing to work on a daily basis in his workshop, and is one of the most well-known American artists. A major retrospective of his work was recently held at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York (Oct 30, 2015–Feb 7, 2016).
Interactive Area for Art Sharing.
The BMW Lounge also features an interactive zone “Animate Your Life”, where visitors can take photos with the BMW Art Car and create a dynamic GIF file using digital technology. This unique memory with the BMW Art Car can be shared with friends and family via email and social media.
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