Basel/Munich. Art Basel and BMW today announced the 2020 artist shortlist of the BMW Art Journey, a joint initiative recognizing and supporting emerging artists worldwide. 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.
As this year’s Art Basel show in Hong Kong had to be cancelled due to the outbreak and spread of the new crisis, the jury conducted its selection process online. Artists and their galleries were invited to submit digital applications, including a short video by the artists explaining their work and process. For the first time, eligible participants included not only artists from the Discoveries sector of the 2020 show, but – more generally – artists presented by participating galleries founded less than ten years ago. The international jury chose the following shortlist:
Leelee Chan
Born in 1984; lives and works in Hong Kong; represented by Capsule Shanghai.
Jes Fan
Born in 1990; lives and works in New York; represented by Empty Gallery, Hong Kong.
Amy Lien & Enzo Camacho
Born in 1987 and 1985; live and work in New York and Manila; represented by 47 Canal, New York.
The shortlisted artists are now invited to develop the proposal for their ideal journey, with the winner to be announced in June 2020.
The members of this year’s expert jury are:
Claire Hsu, Director Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong
Matthias Mühling, Director Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich
Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, President Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin
Philip Tinari, Director UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing
Samson Young, artist and winner of the first BMW Art Journey
“The shortlisted artists are united by a common interest in research-led practices that are well-positioned to benefit from the support that the BMW Art Journey can provide,” noted the jury in its unanimous decision. “While offering perspectives that are uniquely their own, these artists’ visions are not bound by national and cultural boundaries.”
“In the collaborative practice of Amy Lien and Enzo Camacho, archival and anthropological research comes to ground installations that make visible urgent, complex, unlikely narratives. Their planned presentation for Art Basel in Hong Kong, based on a religious mural by midcentury Filipino-American painter Alfonso Ossorio, struck us as one of the most multifaceted and compelling of the duo’s projects to date. Jes Fan excels in his use of materials, such as glass, silicon and resin. We appreciated his examination of the body at a molecular level, exploring its limits and framing the existence of a biological body in a digital contemporaneity. He has also probed the notion of otherness, questioning received categories of race, gender and identity. In the densely populated city Hong Kong, Leelee Chan opens up resonating spaces with her sculptures, as if from an unknown dimension. Her ethereal, extraterrestrial-looking objects are composed of the detritus of the big city. Like an archaeologist, she assembles fragmented snapshots of an urban civilization. At the same time, the objects appear to transcend the human understanding of space and time,” states the jury.
Works of this year’s shortlisted artists can be viewed in a virtual showroom setting at https://www.artbasel.com/bmw-art-journey.
In collaboration with the winning artist, the journey will be documented and shared through publications, online and via social media.
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); video artists Henning Fehr and Philipp Rühr (presented by Galerie Max Mayer, Dusseldorf at Art Basel’s Miami Beach show in 2015); 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), Jamal Cyrus (represented by Inman Gallery, Houston at Art Basel’s Miami Beach show in 2017), Zac Langdon-Pole (represented by Michael Lett, Auckland at Art Basel’s Hong Kong show in 2018) and Lu Yang (represented by the gallery Société, Berlin at Art Basel Hong Kong 2019).
BMW has supported Art Basel’s shows in Basel, Miami Beach and Hong Kong for many years.
