- BMW Group France, patron of Les Rencontres d’Arles for the 14th
year, is providing the Festival with a fleet of electrified BMW cars
to transport guests, artists and curators. - INSOLARE, by Eva Nielsen and Marianne Derrien, was created as part
of the BMW ART MAKERS program and developed with Les Rencontres
d’Arles, where it will be shown for the first time, before being
exhibited at Paris Photo in November 2023. - The BMW ART MAKERS program, created by BMW Group France, supports
a duo each year in the creation of a joint project focusing on
innovation and the visual arts and offers a grant of 10,000 euros to
the artist, 8,000 euros to the curator, and a budget of 15,000 euros
for the research and production of the works as well as the
production of the exhibitions. - BMW is also committed to promoting female talent by supporting the
Prix de la Photo Madame Figaro Arles since its inception.
Munich/Paris. The INSOLARE project is a new
experiment carried out as part of the BMW ART MAKERS. It is the result
of a collaboration between Eva Nielsen and Marianne Derrien, and was
designed especially for Les Rencontres d’Arles and Paris Photo. Their
approach, which is both poetic and scientific, questions time and the
sedimentation of the urban and Camargue landscape. They evoke the
environmental changes that are leading to the disappearance of certain
urban, industrial and natural landscapes, where the human footprint is
always in question.
The artist Eva Nielsen has taken up the subject of
geographical and geological change, a subject that few women have
echoed. The BMW ART MAKERS winner has made several trips to the
Camargue, where she has taken hundreds of photographs. She combines
her observation of climatic and geological phenomena with a technical
gesture, that of exposure, particularly used in screen printing. The
different materials and media used by the artist – photography,
silk-screening, painting and printing – are superimposed and
hybridised, resulting in a form of transfiguration. Like a
topographer, Franco-Danish artist Eva Nielsen defines her work as a
‘state of awareness’ of the reality of a territory, its architecture
and its environment. With INSOLARE, the works change, like the urban
and industrial landscape of the Camargue.
Marianne Derrien, curator, explains that “with
INSOLARE, Eva Nielsen takes optical and hydro-geological phenomena and
combines them with a technical gesture, that of exposure, used in
particular in screen-printing. A spectrum of both rural and industrial
reality, this project crosses the artist’s trajectories with those of
the territories at the gateway to Arles, where the Camargue begins.
This vast triangular island formed by the Gulf of Lion and the
bifurcation of the Rhône called “They” becomes a field of
experimentation. Faced with̀ the intensitý of natural phenomena and
forces, between drought and rising waters, living areas circulate and
migrate in Eva Nielsen’s works through superimpositions of
screen-printed images and paintings offering a fragmented vision of
these territories. Blurring the boundaries between media, practices
and motifs, INSOLARE brings to life the sedimentation of the
Camargue’s solar and liquid landscapes.”
Christoph Wiesner, Director of the Rencontres
d’Arles, explains that “the exhibition is part of the
‘Geographies of the Gaze’ section of the 54th Rencontres d’Arles.
Alongside other artists whose work reveals a state of awareness of the
reality of climate and ecological upheaval, Eva Nielsen takes us on a
journey through the Camargue region, where geography meets the traces
of a contemporary history rich in its past, in a sensitive and
original approach at the crossroads of different practices”.
“Eva Nielsen and Marianne Derrien’s project on the impact of
human activity on the land is a natural fit for the BMW ART MAKERS
program. We’re proud to be presenting a ground-breaking exhibition in
Arles, a key venue for lovers of the visual arts. The intermingling of
mediums and their use as a lever for innovation totally echo the
values of the BMW Group, which is fully committed to contributing to
the trajectory towards carbon neutrality and has presented a concept
for a 100% recyclable and recycled car by 2040,” explains
Maryse Bataillard, Head of Corporate Communications and CSR,
BMW Group France.
A scenography designed specifically to respond to ecological
and heritage preservation issues. With the environment in
mind, the scenography has been designed to ensure that materials are
produced and used as sparingly as possible. Suspended metal
structures have replaced the traditional picture rails, and will be
reused at Paris Photo in November 2023.
The Cloître Saint-Trophime has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site
since 1981, as one of the Roman and Romanesque monuments of Arles. The
system created by Marianne Derrien and Eva Nielsen respects the
constraints of this unique and historic exhibition space. Between the
vaults and the works, they created a gra¬phic and geometric interplay
of resonance and repetition, while addressing the issue of seriality
from both a technical and aesthetic point of view.
BMW Group cultural engagement is based on long term partnerships with
hundreds of projects internationally for more than 50 years now.
Since 2022, BMW Group has also been an official partner of the Cannes
Film Festival and Paris + by Art Basel.
The BMW ART MAKERS 2023 Jury was composed of :
- Florence Bourgeois, Director of Paris Photo,
- Fabrice Bousteau, Editorial Director of Beaux-Arts Magazine,
- Hervé Digne, Chairman of Manifesto,
- Fannie Escoulen, Delegate for Photography at the French Ministry
of Culture - Chantal Nedjib, Founder of l’Image par l’image,
- Christophe Ono-dit-Biot, writer, Deputy Editorial Director of Le Point.
- Christoph Wiesner, Director of Rencontres d’Arles,
- Maryse Bataillard, Head of Corporate Communications and CSR BMW
Group France
