Camille Blatrix premieres ‘Sirens’ for BMW Open Work - BMW Open Work and BMW 8 Series Convertible to be presented in the BMW Lounge

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Featuring more than 160 of the world’s leading galleries, Frieze #london takes place for the 17th time from October 4-6, with preview days on October 2 and 3, 2019. As a long-term partner of the fair, #bmw will welcome the visitors to the #bmw Lounge at the fair and present a diverse program during the opening days. As in previous years, #bmw will also provide the VIP shuttle service transporting the fair’s VIP guests with the 7 Series and the X7.

London/Munich. Featuring more than 160 of the world’s leading galleries, Frieze #london takes place for the 17th time from October 4-6, with preview days on October 2 and 3, 2019. As a long-term partner of the fair, #bmw will welcome the visitors to the #bmw Lounge at the fair and present a diverse program during the opening days. As in previous years, #bmw will also provide the VIP shuttle service transporting the fair’s VIP guests with the 7 Series and the X7.

BMW Open Work by Frieze
The acclaimed Paris-based artist #camilleblatrix has been commissioned for the third edition of #bmw Open Work by Frieze. Curated by Attilia Fattori Franchini, #bmw Open Work gives artists a platform to push the boundaries of their artistic work, starting the project with a creative dialogue between arts, technology, engineering and design to pursue their practice in innovative new directions. Blatrix’s sculptures are interjected with coded references, creating emotionally charged, uncanny objects that offer new relational possibilities. Machine-like in their appearance, the works disguise the artist’s labor, each sculpture combining industrially fabricated elements with those that are meticulously handcrafted using a variety of traditional techniques. Blatrix presents his new commission for #bmw Open Work at Frieze #london 2019.

Titled “Sirens”, the project is the result of an intense collaboration with #bmw Individual, #bmw Group’s division specialized in car customization. Central to the project is a sculpture which presents materials that are similar to those of a vehicle but transformed into strange and unfamiliar forms, away from #automotive functionality. The main sculpture is presented in front of a #bmw M850i Convertible (combined fuel 10,8 – 10,6 l/100 km; combined CO2 emissions: 246 – 241 g/km). This intentional display suggests a dialogue between the artwork and the vehicle, a pull of attraction and repulsion, familiar yet uncanny. The vehicle, placed between spaces, also becomes a dialectical part of Blatrix’s installation, raising questions about functionality and desire, looking at the sculpture and recognizing itself in it, even if declined in a different form.
Apart from the main work, a series of eerily synthetic sculptures, accompanied by a mesmerizing sound work, transforms the #bmw Lounge into an intense but intimate environment.

The enchanting refrain “Come to my harms and let your worries die”, sung by Blatrix’ “Sirens”, dramatizes the seductive, fascinating pull exerted by functionality and industrial processes. Making use of #bmw Individual’s technical skills and craftsmanship, “Sirens” thus explores the primal and emotional relationships to labor, manufacture and materiality, creating a dialogue about sources of desire.

BMW Open Work by Frieze
BMW Open Work by Frieze is a major artistic initiative bringing together art, design and technology in pioneering multi-platform formats. For its premier in 2017, artist Olivia Erlanger integrated a motion-sensitive sculpture, audio and immersive fog in her work “Body Electric”; in 2018, Sam Lewitt engaged with #bmw intellectual property and engine production to conceptually and physically explore the production cycle of a #bmw engine in “CORE (the ‘Work’)”.

BMW Group’s program during Frieze #london 2019
To celebrate the opening of Frieze #london 2019, Soho House and #bmw i host an art talk at Shoreditch House. In conversation with Miranda Sawyer, multimedia artist Nástio Mosquito and musician Billy Childish will debate about the question “Why bother with art when music exists?”. Soho House and #bmw i have been cooperating internationally in the creation of events and experiences focusing on contemporary art, innovation and design.

To learn more about this year’s #bmw Open Work by Frieze commission, #bmw and Frieze invite you to an art talk with the artist #camilleblatrix, curator Attilia Fattori Franchini and Thomas Girst, Head of #bmw Group Cultural Engagement, on October 3, 2019 at the #bmw Lounge at Frieze #london from 3.00 to 4.00 pm.