The 20th BMW Art Car, designed by contemporary art luminary Julie Mehretu, was unveiled at the Center Pompidou in Paris on Tuesday. Following tradition, the BMW M Hybrid V8 racing car will take part in the famous endurance-focused 24 Hours of Le Mans, the world’s oldest race of its kind.
Mehretu’s collaboration with BMW marks the first time the artist’s signature abstractions, which are made from digitally altered photographs overlaid on multiple layers of dot grids, have been applied to a three-dimensional surface. The design aesthetic of the M Hybrid closely follows Mehretu’s monumental painting At all times (2021-2023).
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“In the studio, where I had the model of the BMW M Hybrid V8, I was sitting in front of the painting and I thought: what if this car seemed to go through that paint and was affected by it.” Julie Mehretu said in a statement. “The idea was to make a remix, a mash-up of the painting. I kept seeing that paint dripping on the car. Even the car’s kidneys inhaled the paint.”
Alongside the launch of the race car, Mehretu and BMW announced a joint commitment to a “pan-African series of translocal media workshops” for filmmakers, to be held in several African cities, including Dakar, Marrakech and the artist’s hometown of Addis Ababa in 2025 and 2026, culminating in a major exhibition at the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa in Cape Town.
The first BMW Art Car was designed by Alexander Calder in 1975. Later, distinguished artists from Frank Stella to Esther Mahlangu to David Hockney participated in the Art Car program.
An exhibition of Mehretu’s work opened at Palazzo Grassi from March 17 for the Venice Biennale and will be on view until January 6, 2025. With the title “Ensemble” it is the largest exhibition of Mehretu’s work to date in Europe. Last year his 2001 work No title sold at Sotheby’s Hong Kong for $9.32 million (with fees), an auction record for an artist of African descent.
