Next artist shortlist for the BMW Art Journey announced during Art Basel in Hong Kong

Next artist shortlist for the BMW Art Journey announced during Art Basel in Hong Kong

Following last year’s premiere of the BMW Art Journey, an expert jury today announced the third shortlist. As a joint initiative of Art Basel and BMW, the BMW Art Journey enables emerging artist to go on a journey of their own choice to develop new ideas and create new projects.

Three artists showing in Discoveries, the sector for emerging artists at Art Basel's Hong Kong show, were nominated for the shortlist:

Abigail Reynolds at Rokeby, London

Based in Cornwall, United Kingdom, Abigail Reynolds studied English Literature at Oxford University before pursuing Fine Art at Goldsmiths University. Her interest in books prompts her collages, sculptures, films and most recently, printmaking. The ideas driving Reynold’s work are based on reportage photography books, her interest in networks of association and how our sense of time is affected by technology. She has exhibited at art institutions and galleries in London, Vienna, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Eindhoven. In her presentation at Art Basel in Hong Kong, Reynolds intends to incorporate a large-scale sculpture which will introduce printing her sourced images onto glass for the first time.

Newsha Tavakolian at Thomas Erben Gallery, New York

Newsha Tavakolian, born in 1981, is a Tehran-based photo-journalist and -artist. Early in her career she produced photo documentaries in Iran, Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Pakistan and Yemen and gained international recognition with work published in magazines and newspapers such as Time, Der Spiegel, Le Monde and the New York Times. Tavakolian’s exhibitions include Thomas Erben Gallery, New York, Aaran Gallery, Tehran, and Otto Gallery, Florence. In her recent photography-installation for Art Basel in Hong Kong 2016 she documents the lives of nine Teheran residents. At Art Basel in Hong Kong, Tavakolian combines a wall-size scenery with a large video screen and several photographs of varying sizes into an installation drawn from her forthcoming exhibition and book ‘Blank pages of an Iranian photo album’.

Alvin Zafra at Artinformal, Mandaluyong City

Alvin Zafra was born in 1978 in Quezon City, Philippines. He graduated from the College of Fine Arts at the University of the Philippines in 2000 and won the Dominador Castaneda Award for Visual Essay. He exhibited at West Gallery, Quezon City, Singapore Art Museum, Singapore, and Mori Art Museum, Tokyo. In his exhibition at Art Basel in Hong Kong, Zafra explores two different cities and their architectures. The drawings presented are based on photographs he took in the National Capital Region of the Philippines and in Hanover, Germany.

All three artists are now invited to submit their proposals describing their ideal journey with the winner being announced in the early summer of 2016.