Los Angeles-based artist Nikita Gale to create BMW Open Work by Frieze 2022

Nikita Gale to create BMW Open Work by Frieze 2022, presenting artwork exploring the relationship between technologies of sound and speed to premiere in London.

As reported today, Thursday, August 11, Frieze and BMW continue their long-term partnership with the major art initiative BMW Open Work by Frieze. Los Angeles-based artist Nikita Gale will present the immersive installation ’63/22′ in the BMW Lounge at Frieze London in October 2022.

Drawing inspiration from BMW engineering and curated by Attilia Fattori Franchini, this commission brings together art, technology, and design, in a pioneering multi-platform format.

Investigating the history and politics of sound and its surroundings, Nikita Gale’s practice questions themes of invisibility and audibility recasting the dynamic between performer and spectator. Within the work, notions of witnessing, visibility, and representation are subverted and destabilized.

The technologies of sound and speed have been closely associated since the 1960s. In fact, the Gibson Firebird, one of the most popular electric guitars, was designed by car designer Ray Dietrich and introduced to the general public in 1963.

Gale’s project ’63/22′ explores the relationship between these technologies and unfolds how they have culturally influenced one another through design. As part of the BMW Open Work 2022 commission, the artist will create a sculptural installation comprising a series of electric guitars imagined in collaboration with BMW i7 designers and activated by live performances in the space.

In addition, the artist will invite the BMW i7 designers to sketch utopian, functional, and dysfunctional guitar bodies, these sketches would provide the starting point for the creation of sculptural guitars, a mixture between a functional object and a sculpture.

BMW Open Work by Frieze is a major artistic initiative bringing together art, design and technology in pioneering multi-platform formats. Every year since 2017, BMW Open Work by Frieze invited an artist to create a visionary project inspired by technology, engineering prowess and BMW Design that explores current and future technologies as a vehicle for innovation and artistic experimentation.

For the format’s premiere, 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’)’.

In 2019, Camille Blatrix collaborated with BMW Individual to explore the primal and emotional relationships to labour and materiality, raising questions about functionality and desire in the installation ‘Sirens’.

Artist Madeline Hollander developed ‘Sunrise/Sunset’ in 2020-21, a live networked map composed of hundreds of recycled BMW LED headlights from the BMW Group Recycling and Dismantling Centre, choreographing the sunsets and sunrises across the globe.

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