Munich/Basel/Paris. BMW Art Journey winner 2021
Julien Creuzet, represented by High Art, Paris, started the first part
of his BMW Art Journey on July 15, 2021. In Martinique, he will
explore the unexpected and surprising in the familiar environment of
his ancestors.
The BMW Art Journey is part of BMW Group’s global cultural
engagement, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year.
Committed in the fields of modern and contemporary art, classical
music, jazz and sound as well as architecture and design, the BMW
Group has been an integral part of culture on a global scale.
Inspired by the Martinican thinker, critic and poet Édouard Glissant
who had written about the concept of creolization, “It is a mixture of
arts, customs and languages that produces the unexpected,” Creuzet
will make five trips in total to the Antillean islands Martinique and
Guadeloupe between July 2021 and Spring 2022.
Creuzet himself was raised in Martinique, but never had the chance to
work there. About his BMW Art Journey he says: “I strive to make my
contribution, to give back by offering my experience and a place, a
living world, a workstation for long-term experimentation. My journey
is related to a long-time project that I had in mind, but I was never
able to realize it. It is a good opportunity for me to return and to
re-connect with my native land. I have shown and shared my practice
and perspective around the world, but never in the land of my ancestors.”
During his BMW Art Journey Julien Creuzet will focus on three
artistic projects around the geographically and culturally distinct
region of the Antilleans. Filming landscapes, underwater scenes, and
local festivals such as carnival, on the ground and with drones, he
will create a video in collaboration with local contemporary artists
and musicians.
A second project is an eight months-long workshop with the art
students of Beaux-Arts de Fort-de-France (Campus Caribbean des Arts),
opening a studio for their artistic work. One focus of the workshop
will be about the creation of “bwadjacks” – sculptures made of
modified cars and materials which are usually found on scrapyards, in
a gesture of circularity.
Lastly, Creuzet will work on a project with the local fauna of the
Antilleans. Drawing inspiration from natural forms, he aims to create
new hybrid sculptures recycling plastic and other materials. The
results of his BMW Art Journey are expected to be shown during Art
Basel in Hong Kong in 2022.
About Julien Creuzet at High Art, Paris
Julien
Creuzet (b.1986) lives and works in Montreuil, France. He creates
protean artworks incorporating poetry, music, sculpture, assemblage,
film and animation. Evoking trans-oceanic postcolonial transactions in
relation to multiple temporalities, the artist places his own
inherited past, present and future at the heart of his production.
Eluding generalized narratives and cultural reductions, Creuzet’s work
often spotlights anachronisms and social realities to construct
objects of irreducibility. Recent solo exhibitions include Camden Arts
Center, London (upcoming); Palais de Tokyo and Fondation d’entreprise
Pernod Ricard, Paris. His work was featured in group exhibitions at
Manifesta 13, Marseilles; Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt; Musée
d’Art moderne de Paris and Centre Pompidou, Paris. Creuzet is a
nominee for the Prix Marcel Duchamp 2021.
Julien Creuzet was selected for BMW Art Journey 2021 from a shortlist
of three artists represented by galleries originally accepted into
this year’s Art Basel show in Hong Kong, in an online jury process.
The international jury of experts included Claire
Hsu, Executive Director, Asia
Art Archive, Hong Kong; Matthias Mühling,
Director, Städtische Galerie
im Lenbachhaus und Kunstbau, Munich; Patrizia Sandretto
Re Rebaudengo, President, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo,
Turin; Philip Tinari, Director, UCCA Center for Contemporary Art,
Beijing; and Samson Young, artist and winner of the
first BMW Art Journey.
About the BMW Art Journey
Launched in 2015, the
BMW Art Journey is a collaboration between Art
Basel and BMW, created to recognize and support emerging artists
worldwide. Since 2020, the circle of eligible artists has broadened
and includes not only emerging and mid-career artists from the
Discoveries sector, but also artists represented by galleries founded
no more than ten years ago at Art Basel’s show in Hong Kong. In
recognition of the ongoing exceptional circumstances caused by the
pandemic, the jury conducted its selection process online. The
selected artists were then invited to submit proposals, based on which
the winner was selected.
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); 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), Lu Yang (represented
by the gallery Société, Berlin, at Art Basel’s Hong Kong show in 2019)
and Leelee Chan (represented by Capsule Shanghai at
Art Basel’s Hong Kong show in 2021).
Art Basel and BMW will collaborate with the artist to document the
journey and share it with a broader public through print publications,
online and on social media via @julien.creuzet,
@artbasel
and @bmwgroupculture.
For further information and press material about the BMW Art Journey
artists and their projects, please visit the press section: www.bmw-art-journey.com/press
For further questions please contact:
Prof. Dr
Thomas Girst
BMW Group Corporate and Intergovernmental
Affairs
Head of Cultural Engagement
Telephone: +49 89 382
24753
Email: Thomas.Girst@bmwgroup.com
www.press.bmwgroup.com
Email:
presse@bmw.de
Sarah Degen
Art Basel
Senior Media Relations
Manager
Telephone: +41 58 206 2706
Email: press@artbasel.com