BMW today announced at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York a collaboration with internationally acclaimed New York artist Julie Mehretu to create the twentieth BMW Art Car.
Mehretu was unanimously chosen by an international jury of museum directors and curators and will be given total creative freedom to design the next chapter in BMW’s legendary collection of ‘sculptures on wheels’. BMW will enter Mehretu’s BMW M Hybrid V8 Art Car at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in June 2024.
This initiative continues an almost fifty-year-old tradition that has thrilled not only motorsport enthusiasts, but also all those who love design or the arts, technology and mobility. Since 1975, artists such as Alexander Calder, Frank Stella, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Jenny Holzer, Jeff Koons, Cao Fei and John Baldessari have created racing cars for BMW.
“I have loved cars most of my life, as toys, as objects, as opportunities. That’s why I’m really excited to be working on the next BMW Art Car,” said Julie Mehretu. “This project combines the thrill of speed, the 24 Hours of Le Mans and the creative possibilities that hybrid and all-electric vehicles offer as future modes of interaction and transportation.”
“The BMW Art Car Collection is a central element of our cultural commitment, which has been going on for more than 50 years,” said Ilka Horstmeier, Member of the Board of Management of BMW AG, Human Resources and Real Estate, at the presentation in New York. “The combination of technology and art, of design and motorsport has a timeless appeal. I have admired Julie Mehretu’s work for many years. I am particularly happy that our collaboration will have a lasting cultural impact beyond the vehicle she designed, especially in Africa.”
Julie Mehretu, BMW M Hybrid V8
Photo by: BMW
An artistic concept that goes beyond the automobile: Translocal Media Workshop Series in 2025
The collaboration between BMW and Julie Mehretu will not only leave its mark on the Le Mans track. On the African continent there are few spaces where artists can gather, exchange opinions and experiment in order to foster collaboration in local contexts.
Julie Mehretu and Mehret Mandefro, co-founders of the Realness Institute which aims to strengthen the media ecosystem across Africa, will host a series of meetings in eight African cities over the course of nine months to open spaces for artists to meet, exchange and collaborate . These workshops aim to open a forum for artists to promote new cultural paths in their respective local communities and harness the power of the translocal collective.
The methodology of these workshops is based on the Exodus Media Workshop (EMW), an arts education laboratory initiated by Denniston Hill that focuses on the interdependent inventions of image creation and representation in media. The workshop starts from the mutual intention to separate being from its representation and that our identities can be recovered and reshaped according to personal standards.
The outcome and results of the workshops will be presented together with the 20th BMW Art Car at the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa in Cape Town in 2025.
BMW M Hybrid V8
Photo by: BMW
The artist
Julie Mehretu was born in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, in 1970. She and her family moved to the United States at the age of seven. She received her BA from Kalamazoo College, Michigan, graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design with a Master of Fine Arts in 1997, and spent a year studying at Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar, Senegal.
Exploring the palimpsests of history, from remote geological times to modern phenomenology of the social, his paintings, prints and drawings engage the viewer in a dynamic visual articulation of contemporary experience, a representation of social behavior and the psycho-geography of space.
Mehretu has operated a studio in New York City since 1999. He has received numerous awards for his work, including the MacArthur Award and the Medal of Arts Award from the US Department of State. A representative exhibition of his work has been exhibited at LACMA (Los Angeles), the High Museum (Atlanta), the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York), and the Walker Museum of Art (Minneapolis) from 2019 to 2023. In 2021 Julie Mehretu has become a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Design.
Julie Mehretu is represented worldwide by Marian Goodman Gallery and also exhibits with White Cube (London) Carlier Gebauer (Berlin).
BMW M Hybrid V8
Photo by: BMW
Jury statements. Unanimous nomination.
Julie Mehretu was unanimously chosen to design the 20th BMW Art Car in 2018 by a highly respected international art world jury. The composition of the jury based on their experience and expertise in senior positions at major museums and galleries. It is made up of the following personalities:
Cecilia Alemani, Donald R. Mullen, Jr. Director and Chief Curator, High Line Art, New York
Richard Armstrong, Director, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation, New York
Anton Belov, Director, Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow
Anita Dube, artist and curator Kochi-Muziris-Biennale 2018
Yilmaz Dziewior, Director, Museum Ludwig, Cologne
Okwui Enwezor (1963 – 2019), former director, Haus der Kunst, Munich
Massimiliano Gioni, Artistic Director of Edlis Neeson, New Museum, New York
Madeleine Grynsztejn, Director of the Pritzker Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago
Koyo Kouoh, Executive Director and Chief Curator, Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town
Matthias Mühling, Director, Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus und Kunstbau, Munich
Hans-Ulrich Obrist, Artistic Director, Serpentine Galleries, London
Hervé Poulain, creator of the BMW Art Car Collection and CEO of Artcurial
Stephanie Rosenthal, Director of the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi
Madeleine Grynsztejn, Director of the Pritzker Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago: “Julie Mehretu is the perfect artist for this early 21st century. Her work applied to the shapes of a speeding vehicle is truly a perfect combination. For years Julie has been painting speed and for a long time he has worked successfully.This, to me, means that he will be able to create a form that is clearly visible from a distance, because, as with many of his large commissions, you have to step back to appreciate them really. She has an understanding of space and speed that makes her a perfect match for BMW Art Car.”
Koyo Kouoh, Executive Director and Chief Curator of Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town: “I think Julie Mehretu’s art combines enveloping visuality with a political background. She will be the perfect artist to moderate this tension towards race, technology, the automobile, the speed and bring it into a form understandable for the general public”.
Okwui Enwezor (1963 – 2019), former director of the Haus der Kunst in Munich: “Julie Mehretu’s work encompasses different aspects related to movement. She expresses dynamism within a form. She has a very clear and solid understanding of how the object acts in space. And I think this makes the proposal of an artist of her caliber, who has a long-standing experience, really exciting”.
Hans Ulrich Obrist, Artistic Director of the Serpentine Galleries in London: “Julie Mehretu creates paintings that very often go beyond the canvas. Her practice is very interdisciplinary and of course this is exactly what will happen with the BMW Art Car. they develop the ideas alone in their studio, but in dialogue with many people in the company and in particular with the engineers, inventors and designers.”
Cecilia Alemani, Donald R. Mullen, Jr. Director and Chief Curator of High Line Art, New York: “I think Julie is a wonderful artist who has been able to bring the three-dimensionality of our reality into the two-dimensionality of paintings and surfaces He is someone who has looked at our cities, at the speed of our culture and these are all themes that will find their place in the BMW Art Car. His design for the BMW Art Car will be compelling and he will bring all these aspects together in this wonderful platform.” .
Stephanie Rosenthal, Director of the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi: “Julie Mehretu is best known for large-scale two-dimensional works that are all about speed, space, creation and imagination. Now, working with the BMW Art Car will, I believe, extend her experience of working with a three-dimensional object allowing her to expand her idea of space, and will probably also become a form of futuristic architecture that explores technology. I think it’s a brilliant choice.”
The BMW M Hybrid V8
The canvas of the twentieth BMW Art Car is the BMW M Hybrid V8. The new competition car from BMW M GmbH for endurance racing features a hybrid drive system with around 640 hp, whose 4.0-litre V8 engine is supported by an electric motor (top speed: up to 345 km/h). h, depending on the layout). This makes the racing prototype, which weighs just 1,030 kilograms, a true manifesto of typical M performance and the fascination of electrified units.
The BMW M Hybrid V8 is currently competing successfully in the GTP (Grand Touring Prototype) class of the IMSA North American endurance racing series. BMW M Motorsport will also return to the FIA World Endurance Championship in the 2024 season. In the races of the official FIA World Endurance Championship, the BMW M Hybrid V8 will face first-class competition in the Hypercars category. This means that the BMW M Hybrid V8 will also participate in the 24 Hours of Le Mans – as the first BMW M Motorsport prototype since the BMW V12 LMR won in 1999.
The BMW Art Car Collection
Since 1975, renowned artists from all over the world have been designing the BMW Art Cars. The initiative was born from the French pilot and art lover Hervé
Poulain, who, in collaboration with the then head of BMW Motorsport Jochen Neerpasch, asked his artist friend Alexander Calder to paint a car. The result was a BMW 3.0 CSL which entered the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1975, where it became a crowd favourite. Thus the BMW Art Car Collection was born.
Over the next few years, renowned artists such as Frank Stella, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, Esther Mahlangu, David Hockney, Jenny Holzer, Ólafur Elíasson and Jeff Koons added more BMW Art Cars to the collection, each with their own individual style. More recently, Chinese artist Cao Fei and American John Baldessari each presented a BMW Art Car based on the BMW M6 GT3 in 2016 and 2017. BMW Art Cars are not only exhibited at their home, the BMW Museum in Munich , but also travel around the world as part of international exhibitions.
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