Sam Lewitt: BMW Open Work 2018

Frieze LondonOctober 4–7, 2018The Regent’s Park, London Curated by Attilia Fattori Franchini, BMW Open Work is a major artistic initiative which brings together art, design and technology in pioneering multi-platform formats. The New York-based artist Sam Lewitt is the second artist chosen to create the BMW Open Work by Frieze. Lewitt will debut his ambitious new installation and soundscape at Frieze London, October 4–7, 2018. Lewitt’s practice investigates the circulation of information and matter, opening up operatively closed systems and institutional structures in the process. Entitled CORE (the “Work”), Lewitt’s new commission for BMW Open Work focuses on motor engineering and technology, to conceptually and physically explore the production cycle of a BMW engine. Spurred by the artist’s dialogue with BMW engine specialists, CORE uses physical materials and manufacturing techniques from engineering, to re-imagine the engine manufacturing cycle as an engine in itself. In the process CORE engages with the structure of the commissioning system itself, by addressing relations of symbolic and material exchange within the work’s form. Lewitt’s new commission will unfold as an installation in the BMW Lounge at Frieze London 2018, a soundscape in the Courtesy Car Service at the fair, and online at closed-core.com.  About BMW Open WorkCurated by Attilia Fattori Franchini, BMW Open Work annually invites an artist to develop an ambitious project. Drawing on dialogue with BMW designers, engineers and technological experts, artists will be able to consider current and future technologies as tools for innovation and artistic experimentation, creating artworks with the potential to unfold across a range of media and exhibiting platforms.  About Sam LewittSam Lewitt is the second recipient of BMW Open Work, launched in 2017. Lewitt lives and works in New York. Selected institutional solo exhibitions include: Swiss Institute, New York (2016), Kunsthalle Basel (2016) and The Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art, San Francisco (2015). Selected group exhibitions include Other Mechanisms, Secession, Vienna (2018), Crash Test, La Panacée, Montpellier (2018), the 57th Venice Biennale, Venice (2017), A Slow Succession with Many Interruptions, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco (2016), Nature after Nature at Fridericianum, Kassel (2014), and Materials and Money and Crisis, MUMOK, Vienna (2013) and the Whitney Biennial (2012). About Attilia Fattori FranchiniAttilia Fattori Franchini is an independent curator and writer based between London and Milan. She is co-founder of the non-profit platform bubblebyte.org and Opening Times and contributes essays and reviews to international publications. She is the curator of BMW Open Work by Frieze, Curva Blu, a residency project in Favignana, Sicily and the Emergent section of miart, Milan and will direct the next edition of the Termoli Art Prize, Italy. Recent projects include Could you visit me in dreams? as part of curated_by 2018, Vienna; Red Lake at Point Centre for Contemporary Art, Nicosia, 2018; ARS17+ at Kiasma, Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki, 2017; Céu Torto, Boatos Fine Arts, São Paulo, 2017; Europa and the Bull at LambdaLambdaLambda, Pristina, 2016; Kuvat Academy of Fine Arts, Helsinki, 2015; Bold Tendencies 2015, London; HAND by Create, Barbican Centre, London, 2013.