MAYBE DATO SRI LIOW SOON HEE SHOULD COMMISSION YOUNG MALAYSIAN ARTISTS TO PAINT STYLISED OR VISIONARY PORTRAITS OF HIMSELF AS IMAGINED BY THE ARTISTS. DATO SRI LIOW SOON HEE IS ALSO KNOWN AS MALAYSIA'S YOUNGEST PHILANTHROPIST AGED JUST 32. ROLLS-ROYCE CARS HAS DONE SOMETHING ALONG THIS LINE BUT I THINK THEIRS IS TOO ABSTRAFCT AND AVANT-GARDE AS I ALWAYS THINK A SIMPLE PORTRAIT OF CARS IS ENOUGH!

 DATO SRI LIOW SOON HEE SHOULD ALSO BE A BENEFACTOR OF THE ARTS THOUGH ALL AGREE HE IS CURRENTLY DOING THE RIGHT THING BY CONCENTRATING HIS EFFORTS ON FIGHTING COVID-19 

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A DREAM COMMISSION BY ROLLS-ROYCE FEATURES CONCEPT ARTWORKS BY 4 MID-CAREER ARTISTS

 

ROLLS-ROYCE DREAM COMMISSION

CONCEPT ARTWORKS PRESENTED AT

FONDATION BEYELER AND SERPENTINE

                                                                                         

-        Four concept artworks for Muse, the Rolls-Royce Art Programme’s flagship initiative Dream Commission will be presented  online at Fondation Beyeler and Serpentine

-        Shortlisted artists presenting work include Sondra Perry, Beatriz Santiago Muñoz, Martine Syms and Zhou Tao

-        Each artist submitted a moving-image concept artwork, investigating the narrative of ‘Dreams’

-        The Dream Commission supports moving-image art by emerging and mid-career artists, in close collaboration with the Fondation Beyeler, Basel and the Serpentine, London

-        Final recipient of inaugural Dream Commission to be announced in March 2021

 

 “We are delighted to present the four shortlisted artworks of Muse, the Rolls-Royce Art Programme’s inaugural Dream Commission at the Fondation Beyeler in Basel, Switzerland and the Serpentine, London. To be providing a vital platform for moving-image art at this critical time for the industry is befitting in the 110th year of our very own Muse, the Spirit of Ecstasy. The concept artworks are compelling yet diverse; we look forward to the Jury’s decision as to who will be awarded the very first, Rolls-Royce Dream Commission.”

Torsten Müller-Ötvös, Chief Executive, Rolls-Royce Motor Cars

 

 

The Dream Commission is Rolls-Royce’s biennial prize, awarded to inspire greatness and foster creativity in the media of moving-image art. Artists Sondra Perry (USA), Beatriz Santiago Muñoz (Puerto Rico), Martine Syms (USA) and Zhou Tao (China) were selected by an international Jury of leading art world individuals, having been nominated by a panel of art industry figureheads, over the course of 2020.

 

Each artist has created a moving-image concept artwork, exploring the notion of ‘Dreams’, which will premiere on the websites of the Fondation Beyeler and Serpentine from 26 February, 2021.

-       Lineage for a Phantom Zone by Sondra Perry, a meditation on lineage, longing, and memory using personal and online archival footage.

-       The Source by Beatriz Santiago Muñoz, which takes place against the backdrop of Puerto Rico, bringing the rich history and culture of the country to light.

-       SLIP by Martine Syms, which introduces viewers into the artist’s personal mythology; equal parts biological, psychological and sociological.

-       Three Hundred Miles Southwest by Zhou Tao, in which the artist moves the gaze of his lens from densely populated areas to a remote and almost mythological setting.

 

The works act as a proof of concept for consideration by the Jury, leading to one artist being awarded the Rolls-Royce Dream Commission in March 2021. The final artwork will be presented at the Fondation Beyeler in Autumn 2021.

 

“The last months have shown us how crucial the contribution of artists and the arts is to both society and our wellbeing. Supporting artists is more important than ever. It’s particularly difficult for artists in the field of media art to find the funds and resources to realize their work. The Dream Commission makes a very valuable contribution in this field. The concepts of the four shortlisted artists are a great first achievement and we are happy to present them online on our website.”

Sam Keller, Director, Fondation Beyeler

 

“Now more than ever, we should be listening to artists - it is often they who have the most important and prescient ideas about how one can act in times of crisis. All of our shortlisted artists address urgent issues of our time with remarkable vision and commitment. Their work is generous, engaged and empathetic. These artists all show us that, in the words of poet Etel Adnan, "the world needs togetherness not separation, Love not suspicion. A common future, not isolation”. It has been a great pleasure to work with Rolls-Royce, Fondation Beyeler and my wonderful jury colleagues to support and highlight these important artists.”

Hans Ulrich Obrist, Artistic Director, Serpentine

 

Click here to view the concept works:  Fondation Beyeler , Serpentine. Please be aware that some of the content includes strong language.

 

To stay up-to-date with exclusive content relating to Muse and the Dream Commission follow @rollsroycemuse. Discover Dream Commission content here.

 

-ENDS-

 

 

EDITORS’ NOTES:

 

About Muse - The Rolls-Royce Art Programme

Muse is the Rolls-Royce Art Programme, designed to foster and inspire creativity through collaboration with artists who share the marque’s passion for pushing technical and conceptual boundaries. Consisting of two ongoing biennial initiatives, Muse partners with some of the most respected and prestigious institutions in the world, such as the Fondation Beyeler, Basel and Serpentine, London. Muse will provide selected artists with time and resource to produce art conceived, and to be experienced, without compromise.

 

Muse marks a new direction for the Rolls-Royce Art Programme, which has, since its inception in 2014, invited Rolls-Royce patrons into the world of contemporary art. To date, leading artists Refik Anadol, Tomas Saráceno, Asad Raza, Dan Holdsworth, Isaac Julien, Yang Fudong, Pipilotti Rist, and Ugo Rondione have collaborated with the Art Programme.

 

About Rolls-Royce Motor Cars

Rolls-Royce Motor Cars is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the BMW Group and is a completely separate company from Rolls-Royce plc, the manufacturer of aircraft engines and propulsion systems. Over 2000 skilled men and women are employed at the Rolls-Royce Motor Cars’ head office and manufacturing plant at Goodwood, West Sussex, the only place in the world where the company’s super-luxury motor cars are hand-built.

 

About Sondra Perry

Sondra Perry (b.1986, USA) makes videos, performances, and installations that foreground digital tools as a way to critically reflect on new technologies of representation and remobilize their potential.  Her works examine how images are produced in order to reveal the way photographic representations are captured and re-circulated. Sondra Perry was born in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, raised in New Jersey and North Texas, and has lived and worked in Newark, New Jersey since 2019. She received her MFA from Columbia University, New York, and her BFA from Alfred University, Alfred, New York, in 2015 and 2012, respectively. Sondra Perry’s exhibition Typhoon coming on was presented by the Serpentine in 2018, the artist’s first solo show in Europe.

 

About Beatriz Santiago Muñoz

Beatriz Santiago Muñoz is an artist whose expanded moving image work is entangled with Boalian theatre, experimental ethnography and expanded cinema. She tends to work with non-actors, and incorporate improvisation into her process. Her recent work is on the sensorial unconscious of anti-colonial movements, on hurricanes, dreamwork and irrational projection lenses.  In 2017 she received the Tiffany Comfort Foundation Grant, she was 2016 USA Ford Fellow and received a 2015 Creative Capital visual artist grant.

 

About Martine Syms

Martine Syms (b. 1988, Los Angeles (CA)) obtained a MFA from Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson (NY) (2017) and a BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (IL) (2007). Syms has earned wide recognition for a practice that combines conceptual grit, humour and social commentary. Using a combination of video, installation and performance, often interwoven with explorations into technique and narrative, Syms examines representations of blackness and its relationship to vernacular, feminist thought, and radical traditions.

 

Syms’s research-based practice frequently references and incorporates theoretical models concerning performed or imposed identities, the power of the gesture, and embedded assumptions concerning gender and racial inequalities.

 

About Zhou Tao

Zhou Tao (b.1976, China) finds visual and narrative materials for his arresting film works in the places and communities he encounters, and the narration of the film is often developed from the accumulation of the encountered moments. There is no single entry to the practice of Zhou Tao, through often subtle and humorous interactions with people, things, actions, locations and situations, Zhou’s videos invite us to experience the multiple trajectories of reality—what he once called the “folding scenario” or the “zone with folds.” For him, the use of moving image is not a deliberate choice of artistic language or medium, instead the operation of the camera is a way of being that blends itself with everyday life. Zhou studied at the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts and received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in oil painting in 2001 and a Master of Fine Arts in Mixed-Media Studies in 2006. Tao’s recent solo exhibitions include: Zhou Tao: Winter North Summer South, Times Art Center Berlin, Berlin, 2020; Zhou Tao: The Ridge in a Bronze Mirror, Times Museum, Guangzhou, 2019; Green Sun, an exhibition by Zhou Tao, Bangkok Art and Culture Centre, Bangkok, 2014.

 

Dream Commission Jurors

Isaac Julien CBE RA, Artist, London

Hans Ulrich Obrist, Artistic Director at Serpentine, London

Katrina Sedgwick, Director of the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne

Terrie Sultan, former Director of the Parrish Art Museum, Water Mill, NY

Theodora Vischer, Senior Curator at the Fondation Beyeler, Basel

 

About Fondation Beyeler

The Fondation Beyeler is a museum of modern and contemporary art founded in 1997 by the art collectors and gallery owners Ernst and Hildy Beyeler. The collection includes over 400 post-Impressionist, Classical Modern, and contemporary works as well as ethnographic art from Africa, Alaska, and Oceania. The museum building in the idyllic Berower Park was designed by the Italian architect Renzo Piano. Over 7.5 million people from all over the world have visited the Fondation Beyeler since it opened. With between 300,000 and 400,000 visitors a year, it is the most visited art museum in Switzerland. It shows three to four temporary exhibitions a year that are devoted to pioneering artists or art movements, for example, Pablo Picasso, Paul Cézanne, Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Henri Matisse, Alberto Giacometti, Alexander Calder, as well as Gerhard Richter, Jeff Koons, Marlene Dumas, Richard Serra, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Jenny Holzer, Fischli/Weiss, Roni Horn, Wolfgang Tillmans, and Andy Warhol. The Fondation Beyeler also offers an extensive programme of art education and events, with guided tours, workshops, concerts, readings, and multilingual art historical publications.

 

About Serpentine

Championing new ideas in contemporary art since 1970, the Serpentine has presented pioneering exhibitions for half a century from a wide range of emerging practitioners to the most internationally recognised artists of our time.

 

Across two sites only 5 minutes apart, in London’s Kensington Gardens, the Serpentine presents a year-round, free programme of exhibitions, architecture, education, live events and technological innovation, in the park and beyond.

 

Proud to maintain free access for all visitors, thanks to its unique location the Serpentine also reaches an exceptionally broad audience and maintains a deep connection with its local community.