BMW is official partner of Paris+ par Art Basel. Julien Creuzet presents “blue green sea bruise on the horizon” inspired by his BMW Art Journey.

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From October 20 to 23, Paris+ par Art Basel will take place at the Grand Palais Éphémère, in the heart of the French capital. The inaugural edition of the show will bring together 156 leading French and international galleries to present exceptional artworks across all media – from painting and sculpture to photography and digital works. On site, the new work by BMW Art Journey winner 2021, Julien Creuzet, represented by High Art, Paris will be on display. In addition, BMW will provide the VIP shuttle service for the show.

Rooted in the Caribbean diaspora of Paris, the BMW Art Journey took Julien Creuzet back to his ancestral home Martinique, a place he calls “the heart of my imagination". During his stay in August 2021, he focused on visiting various places of personal importance like the Clement Foundation, his mother’s old house, as well as different exhibitions and museums. Creuzet spent time exploring the nature and beaches of Martinique, reserving special time for a visit to the Absalon Waterfall. Meetings with the artist Ernest Breleur, the novelist Patrick Chamoiseau, and a visit to the studio of Jean-Marc Bullet rounded off his colorful itinerary.

After this first trip to Martinique which was planned as one of several, he had to adjust his travel plans due to the ongoing limitations imposed by Covid-19. Therefore, Creuzet came to Munich in fall 2021 and visited the BMW Headquarters, the BMW Museum and the BMW Group plant in Dingolfing. Inspired by the production process of the new BMW 7 series, Creuzet worked closely together with engineers and paint specialists from Dingolfing on a new piece of artwork: “blue green sea bruise on the horizon”

“blue green sea bruise on the horizon” is rooted in the observation of ELVs (end-of-life vehicles) in Martinique – wrecks of cars abandoned on the roadside and reinvested by vegetation. Julien Creuzet associates this inspiration with discovering the different stages of an automobile’s shaping during his visit to the BMW factories. His special interest here lies in the first stage of the manufacture of a car that is, so to say, a flat, minimalist form, very far from the volumes of the cars we know.

Creuzet extracts this form – a BMW side panel – from the factory and populates it with mangrove roots, marshy plants that grow on the bangs of urban spaces, as well as roots that are symbols of proliferation, source, and ecosystem in the archipelagic, creole, and intercultural Caribbean thought. In the reflection of the Martinican thinker Édouard Glissant, the mangrove embodies the image of the rhizome as multiple roots, which network in a horizontal, composite, and plural way in opposition to the unique, hierarchical, and pyramidal root.

On the surface of the sculpture, Creuzet draws various elements with welding chains: scarifications, a legacy of African culture, an anthropomorphic figure that emancipates itself, the overlapping Caribbean and South American seismic plates that form a volcanic chain, a horse statuette found in the debris of the 1902 eruption of Mount Pelée, and the skyline of the West Indies Mountain range.

The highly specialized experts from the BMW Group plant in Dingolfing implanted the programming of 33.000 welding spots and the handcrafted painting of special color gradients on the 7 series platine, using the original BMW colors “Isle of Man Green” and “Portimao Blue”. The work with Julien Creuzet is another individual, artistic production for the team at the BMW Group plant in Dingolfing, following the cooperation with Jeff Koons for THE 8 X JEFF KOONS in early 2022.

“A factory like BMW’s Dingolfing site is a world in itself, a community of people, of scientific and technological skills. It is also the matrix of tomorrow’s world. Robot fields as far as the eye can see, automated machines that perform many tasks. In me this provokes a mixture of fear and fascination. This is my journey, these are my discoveries, my explorations. Exoticism is found here in the middle of this production chain where 1,500 cars are produced every day,“ says Julien Creuzet about his visit at the BMW Group plant in Dingolfing.

“blue green sea bruise on the horizon” by Julien Creuzet will be on display at Paris+ par Art Basel. BMW Partner Lounge, Ground floor, Grand Palais Éphémère.

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.

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

On the occasion of Paris+ par Art Basel the new all-electric BMW i7 will be on display in front of the Grand Palais Éphémère. The BMW i7 defines a completely new level of top-of-the-range design and technology. Like no BMW vehicle before it, it stands for a new understanding of luxury that includes the needs and well-being of the passengers as well as advanced digitalisation and sustainability along the entire value chain.

To visit the exhibition please note that entrance tickets are required:

Julien Creuzet’s “blue green sea bruise on the horizon” at Paris+ par Art Basel, BMW Partner Lounge, Ground floor, Grand Palais Éphémère.

Wednesday, October 19
VIP First Choice, 10am – 2pm (upon invitation)
VIP Preview, 2 – 7pm (upon invitation)

Thursday, October 20
Vernissage (upon invitation), 11am – 3pm
Public Opening, 3 – 8pm

Friday, October 21 & Saturday, October 22
VIP Hour, 11 – 12 noon (upon invitation)
Public Day, 12 noon – 8pm

Sunday, October 23
VIP Hour, 11 – 12 noon (upon invitation)
Public Day, 12 noon – 7pm