Samson Young
During this year’s edition of Art Basel in Hong Kong, Art Basel and BMW presented the first iteration of their joint initiative to recognize and support emerging artists worldwide – the BMW Art Journey. Like a mobile studio, the BMW Art Journey can take artists almost anywhere in the world to develop new ideas and envision new creative projects.
Today an international expert jury announced the following shortlist of three artists showing in Discoveries, the sector for emerging artists at Art Basel’s Hong Kong show:
Mika Tajima, at Eleven Rivington, New York
Mika Tajima was born in 1975, in Los Angeles, and currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She employs painting, sculpture, textiles, video, sound and performance in her practice and draws on inherent contradictions in design, engineering and architecture to consider the organization and experience of collective production. Tajima has exhibited widely in the last 10 years and her solo projects and commissions for institutions include the Swiss Institute, New York; The Kitchen, New York; Bass Museum of Art, Miami; Aspen Art Museum, Colorado; Seattle Art Museum, WA; and Art in General, NY. In her Art Basel project Mika Tajima presents an all-encompassing installation of new works based on an idealized workspace and showroom.
Trevor Yeung, at Blindspot Gallery, Hong Kong
Trevor Yeung, born in 1988 in China, lives and works in Hong Kong. He graduated from the Academy of Visual Arts at Hong Kong Baptist University in 2010. Yeung uses botanic ecology, horticulture, photography and installations as metaphors that reference the emancipation of everyday aspirations towards human relationships. In 2014, Yeung participated in a group exhibition at Witte de With in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and at the Shanghai Biennale, China. In his presentation at Art Basel Yeung will exhibit photography-based works from his series Sleepy Bed and Enigma.
Samson Young, at am space, Hong Kong
Born in 1979, in Hong Kong, Samson Young studied music, philosophy and gender studies at the University of Sydney and holds a Ph.D. in Music Composition from Princeton. In 2013 Young was named ‘artist of the year’ (media artist) by the Hong Kong Arts Development Council. Young participated in the Asia Triennial Manchester, the Moscow Biennale of Young Art, and also at group exhibitions at Kunsthalle Winterthur, Switzerland, Today Art Museum, Beijing and Taipei Contemporary Art Museum, Taiwan. In his Art Basel project ‘Pastoral Music’, presented by am space, Young combined his research into Hong Kong’s involvement in the Second World War and artists’ roles in warfares in general into a setting that includes graphic musical scores and sound compositions.
The three shortlisted artists now have time until the end of April to develop their proposals of the journey of their dreams, with the winner being announced in the early summer of 2015.
The distinguished experts who conducted the judging in Hong Kong were:
Richard Armstrong, Director Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
Claire Hsu, Director Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong
Matthias Mühling, Director Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich
Shwetal Patel, Curator, India
Pauline J. Yao, Curator Visual Art M+, Hong Kong
In collaboration with the winning artist, the journey will be documented and shared with the public through publications, online and social media.
visit www.bmw-art-journey.com
