The Bite Magazine - Spring 2019 - Issue 24

bite exhibition N ot only do they produce prestigious cars but BMW has been working with artists for almost 50 years now. It started in 1972 when three large- scale paintings were created by artist Gerhard Richter specifically for the foyer of the BMWGroup’s Munich headquarters. Since then they have worked with artists such as Andy Warhol, Jeff Koons, Daniel Barenboim, Jonas Kau- fmann and architect Zaha Hadid. Currently, Chinese artist Cao Fei and American artist John Baldessari are creating the next two vehicles for the BMW Art Car Collection. BMW collaborated with Tate Modern to present the BMW Tate Live Exhibition. Tate Modern, itself, has been present- ing live performances since 2003 but the objective behind the BMW Tate Live was to progress the programme by creating a platform for innovation and a stage for emotion, learning to appreciate the transformational impact of new ideas and en- suring accessibility for audiences. To date they have worked with 40 artists and 11 major art institutions. Their previous programmes have included Amalia Pica: Strangers which presented a performance between strangers; Alexandra Pirici and Manuel Pelmus’ Public Collection , a live exploration of artworks that questioned the museum as a permanent collection; David Lamelas: Time which gave a participatory performance exploring time; and Roman Ondák: Good Feelings in Good Times, an artificially created queue performed by a small group of participants in 2016. The first annual BMW Tate Live Exhibition was in 2017 which presented Ten Days Six Nights , marking a new depar- ture in the concept of the art exhibition: from a static pres- entation to an experience of art that unfolds through time. The exhibition returned the following year to provide more performances of film, sound and dance. This year, the subject changed with the presentation of ‘Sex’ by German artist Anne Imhof whose major new works were shown in the subterra- nean Tanks, a permanent gallery space at Tate Modern. One of the most pioneering contemporary artists of her gen- eration, Imhof a long-term partner of BMW, was awarded the Preis der Nationalgalerie in 2015 and the prestigious Gold- en Lion at Venice Biennale in 2017. The commission is both an exhibition by day and a series of six live performances by night. Using the subject of ‘Sex’, her work deals with the flu- idity between binaries – female and male, top and bottom, night and day – and the blurred line where two opposing zones meet. At the exhibition held in March 2019, visitors were able to walk into the space on a raised platform, a scenario mirrored in the East Tank where the hierarchy of viewing is reversed and visitors are located on the ground beneath a piece. The adjacent Transformer galleries displayed a collection of Im- hof ’s Gradient and Scratch paintings, alongside elements of sculpture that intervened in the architecture. During the six evenings, collaborators from diverse backgrounds interacted with each other and engaged with situations and objects that served as a setting of their characters. Although she didn’t appear in the work herself, Imhof was always present, orchestrating the work and sending notes and directions to her collaborators. Power dynamics between performer and viewer were a key component of ‘Sex’ while viewing positions alternated between high and low, shifting perspectives on the live tableaux. The performers also occu- pied an inaccessible zone behind a glass partition in the East Tank, onto which they painted. Imhof who lives and works in Berlin and Frankfurt, Germa- ny has had solo exhibitions at major international venues such as the Hamburger Bahnhof, Biennale de Montréal, Kun- sthalle Basel and Portikus Frankfurt in 2016; MoMA (Muse- um of Modern Art) PS1, New York in 2015 and the Musee d’art Contemporain in Nîmes, France in 2014. Her work has also been featured in numerous group exhibitions, including the Palais de Tokyo and the Centre Pompidou, Paris in 2015; and the Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt in 2014. The artist is renowned for staging complex performative projects over long periods of time, such as ‘Faust’, an intense and engaging installation created for the German pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale in 2017. The artist divided the interior with glass partitions and floors inhabited by a cho- reographed group of performers. Other recent projects have included ‘Angst’, presented in three acts at Kunsthalle Basel, Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart – Berlin, and the Biennale de Montréal in 2016. ‘Sex’ was the first of three chapters in a project commissioned by Tate Modern, London, the Art Institute of Chicago, and Castello di Rivoli Museo d'Arte Contemporanea, Rivoli-Tu- rin. www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/ anne-imhof