After Calder, Stella And Lichtenstein, Julie Mehretu’s BMW Art Car Takes On Le Mans And Puts Art In Movement

Each of Julie Mehretu's paintings is a journey of exploration, a journey into the unknown where layers upon layers of meaning come into play. Each layer is buried under the previous one and emerges sporadically. His ink and acrylic marks that densely populate the canvas are frantic and tumultuous, disorienting the eye in dizzying visual experiences. Some parts are overflowing with signals, while others are practically empty. Through a practice fueled by art, geography, history, social struggles, geopolitical violence and natural disasters, such as the California wildfires, Hurricane Katrina, the Arab Spring, the Ukraine, the global refugee crisis or the burning of Grenfell Tower in London, its turbulent landscapes echo the chaos of our world. “It's an effort to interrogate the conditions in which we find ourselves, and many times these conditions repeat themselves over and over again in many different contexts, so we can think of rebellion, revolution, or war as a kind of response which we keep turning to,” he explains. “We're not learning from history, so my work is an effort to understand and make sense of how humanity continues to evolve despite the effort to try to keep us repressed.”

Born in Addis Ababa in 1970 to an Ethiopian father who was a geographer and a Jewish-American mother who was a Montessori teacher, Mehretu had fled with her family from Ethiopia to Michigan at age six at a time of political strife. After studying at Cheik Anta Diop University in Senegal, he graduated from Kalamazoo College in Michigan in 1992, before earning an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design five years later. “Growing up in the '70s in the Midwest, there weren't many regional contemporary art museums,” he recalls. “I majored in art because that was what I did the most. It was my way; it was my passion, I didn't know I could make a living as a contemporary artist until I finished college and moved to New York.” In 2019, a mid-career retrospective that debuted at the County Museum of Art in Los Angeles, then traveled to the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, followed by a The world record for the highest sale price of any work by an artist of African descent at auction when her painting “Walkers with the Dawn and Morning” fetched $10.7 million at Sotheby's in New York in 2023, confirmed Mehretu as one of the most prominent contemporary artistic voices. in the USA

Now Mehretu is being honored with the largest exhibition of her work to date in Europe, at the Palazzo Grassi in Venice, bringing together a selection of over 50 paintings produced over a 25-year period. On view until January 6, 2025, “Ensemble” is also a dialogue with works that resonate with hers of some of her closest friends, who have influenced her and with whom she has had a history of exchange and work They include Tacita Dean, who filmed Mehretu at the engraving event; Nairy Baghramian, who created freestanding aluminum sculptural frames for his recent “TRANSpaintings” on semi-translucent polyester mesh that free his canvases from the wall for the first time; Paul Pfeiffer, with whom he co-founded the Denniston Hill artist-run residency in New York's Catskills; and Jessica Rankin, with whom he shares a life together.

Another good example of how collaboration is an integral part of Mehretu's practice was her nomination to design the 20^th BMW Art Car for the German brand's iconic collection of “rolling sculptures”. Since 1975, the world's most famous artists such as Alexander Calder, Frank Stella, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, David Hockney, Jenny Holzer, Jeff Koons and Cao Fei have created BMW Art Cars. Mehretu's latest BMW Art Car almost didn't see the light of day. Although she had been unanimously selected in 2018 by an international jury of museum directors and curators, including Richard Armstrong, director of the Guggenheim Museum, and Hans-Ulrich Obrist, artistic director of the Serpentine Galleries in London, only two years later he accepted. to the project, encouraged by her nephews, after initially turning it down because she wasn't sure how she would handle the process of painting a car. After looking at a photo of the jury and seeing the late Okwui Enwezor, former director of Haus der Kunst in Munich, who had said, “express dynamism within a form,” Mehretu decided to accept the challenge. “I missed his perspective during the pandemic when we were globally in quarantine,” he notes. “And when I thought about what Okwui would do in a condition like this, how could you take an opportunity like this and invent something else, what does it mean to think about mobility during this time and how could an Art Car project evolve into some thing? bigger than painting a car, it got really interesting.”

Imbued with a sense of movement and dynamism, Mehretu's painting “Everywhen” became the starting point. A haze of color is layered over and under energetic strokes, swirls, scribbles and explosive lines that cannot be contained within the canvas. He remixed it into a BMW M Hybrid V8 prototype using a 3D mapping technique, imagining the paint “inhaled and digested by the car, which then transforms the car,” he says. “When I was in the studio with a one-fifth scale model of the car in front of the painting, I kept thinking about how I could drip into the car somehow. Then it became interesting to think about the painting as a portal to where the vehicle would move.” It also gives a shout out to Frank Stella's Art Car with its grid pattern through its own spotted grid in a black and white halftone motif.

According to the BMW Art Car jury members: “Julie's first three-dimensional work combines her aesthetic and formal language with the idea of ​​error and blur, turning speed into a visceral experience. This energetic space is as fierce and competitive in racing as it is ambitious as a creative playground of the imagination. It not only pays homage to the Art Cars of Jenny Holzer and Frank Stella, but also creates a visual network from Mad Max to graffiti and street art that is unique within the BMW Art Cars series.”

Since BMW's Art Car program originally grew out of the winning idea of ​​combining automotive icons and world-renowned artists envisioned by French driver, auctioneer and art enthusiast Hervé Poulain, it was only natural that about half of the 20 Art Cars have competed. on racetracks around the world, from the Rolex 24 at Daytona in Florida to the legendary 24 Hours of Le Mans in northwestern France. The 20th^th BMW Art Car was designed to compete from the start. “The whole BMW Art Car project is about invention, imagination, pushing the limits of what's possible. I don't think of this car as something you would put on display,” says Mehretu. “I think of it as something that will race at Le Mans. It's a performative painting. My BMW Art Car was created in close collaboration with engineering and motorsport teams. The BMW Art Car is only complete once it's finished the race”.

The world's most challenging endurance race, the 24 Hours of Le Mans is based on a simple rule: the vehicle that has traveled the longest distance after 24 hours wins. Originally invented to test the durability of materials and showcase innovative techniques, the race is now an essential fixture in the motorsport calendar. A grueling test of endurance for both man and machine, the 2024 edition of the competition last June made history for the number of hypercars entered – 23 from nine different manufacturers battling it out in conditions wet and windy – compared to 16 participants. last year. As in the 2023 centenary edition, this year saw a Ferrari victory in front of a record 329,000 spectators, with Toyota and Porsche in serious contention. The technical progress of the cars combined with the prowess of the drivers gave visitors a particularly close edition of the 24 Hours of Le Mans, keeping them in suspense until the final minutes with nine cars finishing on the same lap, a first in history . of the discipline.

Marking its return to the top category of the 24 Hours of Le Mans after a 25-year hiatus, BMW M Motorsport unveiled two BMW M Hybrid V8s. Since no BMW Art Car has ever won at Le Mans, the team had high hopes for the 20th^th BMW Art Car in the Mehretu-designed livery and number 20. However, both hypercars met with unfortunate and frustrating mid-race crashes despite showing strong pace. Due to an unforced error of the controller, the 20^th The BMW Art Car left the track just two and a half hours into the race and hit a barrier, forcing it to limp back to the pits on three wheels. With extensive tire, bodywork and suspension damage, the car only managed to cover 96 laps in total, remaining in the pits for most of the 24-hour race before exiting again for the final four laps. The decision had been made to have the car cross the finish line to honor the Art Car project, Mehretu, the designers, engineers and the BMW M Team WRT.

Beyond the vehicle, BMW, Mehretu and Emmy-nominated producer, writer and co-founder of the Realness Institute, Mehretu Mandefro, will host artist workshops in five African cities, culminating in a major exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art Africa Zeitz al Cape Town in 2026. A longtime advocate of encouraging other artists to take creative risks, Mehretu concludes, “The only thing an artist can't be is restricted in a particular way. I think an artist is constantly finding, challenging and inventing from society and reflecting a large part of that culture back to society. But I don't think society can push itself anywhere without the creativity of artists and cultural creators.”