Artist shortlist for the BMW Art Journey announced during Art Basel in Hong Kong

Artist shortlist for the BMW Art Journey announced during Art Basel in Hong Kong

Already in its third year Art Basel and BMW continue their joint initiative to recognize and support 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. Today, an expert jury announced the next shortlist consisting of three artists showing in Discoveries, the sector for emerging artists, at Art Basel's Hong Kong show: Astha Butail, Julian Charrière and Lin Ke.

Astha Butail at GALLERYSKE, Bangalore, New Delhi

Astha Butail, born in 1977 in Amritsar, India, lives and works in Gurgaon. Central to her artistic practice is the use of geometry as a means of inquiry to understand how different composite elements of an entity relate to its whole. Her themes are memory and time, the idea of the archive and collaborative authorship. At this year’s Art Basel in Hong Kong, Butail is presenting her work titled 'Turning towards pure white' (2017) including an assemblage of wall and floor based elements as well as framed panels, three-dimensional pieces extruded from the picture plane and a participatory book. Butail’s debut solo exhibition was shown at GALLERYSKE, Bangalore. Recent group exhibitions include Experimenter, Kolkata, Devi Art Foundation, Gurgaon and Masquelibros Artists Book Fair, Madrid.

Julian Charrière at Dittrich & Schlechtriem, Berlin

Born in 1987 in Morges, Switzerland, Julian Charrière lives and works in Berlin. He studied at the Berlin University of Arts. Charrière’s artistic practice includes performance, sculpture and photography. His projects often stem from fieldwork in remote locations with acute geophysical identities such as volcanoes, ice-fields and radioactive sites. At Art Basel in Hong Kong Charrière is presenting his work 'Coconut Lead Fondue' (2016), consisting of a series of large format photographs, two vitrine sculptures and an installation. Charrière’s solo exhibitions include Sean Kelly, New York, Sies + Höke, Dusseldorf and Musée Cantonal Des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne. The artist has exhibited in recent group shows at KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna and will exhibit at the 2017 Biennale in Venice.

Lin Ke at BANK, Shanghai

Born in 1984 in Wenzhou, China, Lin Ke lives and works in Beijing. He graduated from the New Media Arts Department of the China Academy of Art in 2008 and received the OCAT - Pierre Huber Art Prize in 2014 and the Chinese Youth Artist Award of the 9th AAC Art 2015. At Art Basel in Hong Kong, the artist is presenting 'Like Me' (2016), a video recording of a performance and two image based works, showing his exploration of the variety of the World Wide Web, such as applications functioning as catalyst for making art and self-portraiture. Ke’s work has been exhibited at Zentrum für Kunst und Medien (ZKM), Karlsruhe, Museum Folkwang, Essen, Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo and the 11th Shanghai Biennial.

These three shortlisted artists are now invited to develop a proposal for their ideal journey, with the winner to be announced in the early summer of 2017.

The members of the expert jury in Hong Kong are:

Claire Hsu, Director Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong

Bose Krishnamachari, President Kochi-Muziris Biennale, India

Matthias Mühling, Director Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus and Kunstbau, Munich Alexandra Munroe, Senior Curator of Asian Art, and Senior Advisor, Global Arts, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York

Pauline J. Yao, Curator Visual Art M+, Hong Kong

'This group represents the exceptionally strong selection of artists featured in this year's Discoveries Sector, which was distinguished by the participation of adventurous young artists and galleries from around the globe. As a jury, we made a unanimous decision about the three shortlisted artists, while acknowledging the many powerful works and installations on display. These three artists represent a broad diversity of art practices – from photography, post-internet and digital aesthetics, and installation. Each artist is connected to a particular history, school and tradition, and they come from very different parts of the world. We eagerly look forward to reading their proposals for the BMW Art Journey,' states the jury.

During this year's show in Hong Kong, British artist Abigail Reynolds (represented by Rokeby, London), one of the BMW Art Journey winners in 2016, presents an installation of work made in response to her epic journey ‘The Ruins of Time: Lost Libraries of the Silk Road’. Reynolds’ journey took her to sites dating from 291 BC to 2011 across China, Egypt, Italy, Iran, Turkey, and Uzbekistan. Along the way, Reynolds gathered material in various forms including 16mm film, photography, microscopic imagery, written text, plans and cataloguing systems. Based on this extensive research, she has created a cluster of objects, structures and moving-image works, the latter being her first attempt to work in this medium on display in the BMW Lounge. Images, texts and other documents originating from the experience will be included in a book – thus completing a journey that both starts and ends with the institution of the library.

BMW is a global partner of Art Basel and has supported Art Basel’s three shows in Basel, Miami Beach, and Hong Kong for many years. For further information about the BMW Art Journey, please visit bmw-art-journey.com.