- Media artist Refik Anadol’s newly commissioned work for Muse, the Rolls-Royce Art Programme, will be exhibited at the Geneva International Motor Show, 5-15 March 2020
- Prior to this the artwork, entitled Art of Perfection: Data Painting, was exhibited between 10–17 February 2020 at The Peninsula Beverly Hills and during Frieze Los Angeles
- Anadol’s work incorporates data sets relating to the colour of every Rolls-Royce motor car created at the Home of Rolls-Royce in Goodwood, England, since 2009
Turkish-born, Los Angeles-based media artist Refik Anadol has created a unique work of digital art for Muse, The Rolls-Royce Art Programme, using data sets relating to the colour of every Rolls-Royce motor car created at the Home of Rolls-Royce in Goodwood, England, over the last 10 years. The artwork, entitled Art of Perfection: Data Painting, was presented during Frieze Los Angeles at The Peninsula Beverly Hills, 10–17 February 2020. The hotel was selected to premiere the work in recognition of Rolls-Royce’s and The Peninsula Hotels’ shared affinity and commitment to visual arts. Rolls-Royce will now exhibit the work at the Geneva International Motor Show, 5–15 March 2020.
Art of Perfection: Data Painting consists of an LED ‘canvas’, conveying a unique data painting derived from data captured at Rolls-Royce Motor Cars’ Surface Finish Centre. The data relates to the colour reference of each car, combined with information generated by the programmed robotic movement required to perfectly apply the surface finish to each car. The custom visuals created for this work have been precisely designed to complement the ‘canvas’ and surrounding space.
Torsten Müller-Ötvös, Chief Executive Officer, Rolls-Royce Motor Cars, commented, “We have great pleasure in publicly exhibiting this extraordinary new work by Refik Anadol, commissioned for Muse, the Rolls-Royce Art Programme, at The Peninsula Beverly Hills. The artist was recently an honoured guest at the Home of Rolls-Royce in Goodwood, England, where he was drawn to the complex data sets generated by the Surface Finish Centre, as well as the thousands of unique colours chosen by our clients. The resulting work is mesmerising!”
Anadol’s body of work addresses the challenges and the possibilities that ubiquitous computing has imposed on human kind, and what it means to be a human in the age of machine intelligence. He explores how the perception and experience of time and space are radically changing now that machines dominate our everyday lives. His site-specific audio-visual performances have been presented internationally at Hammer Museum, Los Angeles USA; International Digital Arts Biennial, Montreal, Canada; and Ars Electronica Festival, Linz, Austria.
Artist Refik Anadol commented, “As an artist who utilises data as pigment, I’m very excited that Rolls-Royce is sharing their complex computational painting data with me, to use as the raw material for this artwork. This project will be very collaborative as there is a direct correlation between Rolls-Royce’s process and mine, in that we harness machines and machine intelligence to help actualise our vision of beauty.”
Art of Perfection: Data Painting will be presented on permanent display at Rolls-Royce’s global headquarters, with an edition of the piece travelling to international showrooms in 2020. The artwork was previewed at the House of Rolls-Royce’s major philanthropic event, Dine on the Line, on 21 September 2019, held at the marque’s Global Centre of Luxury Manufacturing Excellence.
The Rolls-Royce Art Programme has supported a number of high-profile artists in recent years, including Tomás Saraceno, Isaac Julien, Asad Raza, Angela Bulloch and Yang Fudong. The future vision of Muse, the Rolls-Royce Art Programme, includes two new initiatives. The first is the Dream Commission, a significant new platform supporting moving-image works created by emerging and mid-career artists worldwide. The second is the Spirit of Ecstasy Challenge, which will invite leading creatives from around the world to reimagine the icon of Rolls-Royce, the sculptural figurine that has graced the bonnet of every Rolls-Royce motor car for over a century, based on a chosen material.
The Peninsula Hotels launched a new ‘Art in Resonance’ programme in 2019, designed to support emerging artists, while also providing guests access to culturally representative pieces.
About Muse – The Rolls-Royce Art Programme: Muse, the Rolls-Royce Art Programme, is designed to foster and inspire creativity through collaboration with artists who share the marque’s passion for pushing technical and conceptual boundaries. Consisting of two ongoing biennial initiatives, Muse partners with some of the most respected and prestigious institutions in the world, such as Foundation Beyeler, Basel and Serpentine Galleries, London. Muse will provide selected artists with time and resource to produce art conceived, and to be experienced, without compromise. Muse marks a new direction for the Rolls-Royce Art Programme, which has, since its inception in 2014, invited Rolls-Royce patrons into the world of contemporary art. To date, leading artists Refik Anadol, Tomas Saráceno, Asad Raza, Dan Holdsworth, Isaac Julien, Yang Fudong, Pipilotti Rist, and Ugo Rondione have collaborated with the Art Programme.
About Rolls-Royce Motor Cars: Rolls-Royce Motor Cars is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the BMW Group and is a completely separate company from Rolls-Royce plc, the manufacturer of aircraft engines and propulsion systems. Over 2000 skilled men and women are employed at the Rolls-Royce Motor Cars’ head office and manufacturing plant at Goodwood, West Sussex, the only place in the world where the company’s super-luxury motor cars are hand-built.
About artist Refik Anadol: Refik Anadol (b. 1985, Istanbul, Turkey) is a media artist, director, and pioneer in the aesthetics of machine intelligence. His body of work locates creativity at the intersection of humans and machines. In taking the data that flows around us as his primary material and the neural network of a computerized mind as his collaborator, Anadol paints with a thinking brush, offering us radical visualisations of our digitised memories and expanding the possibilities of architecture, narrative, and the body in motion. Anadol’s site-specific parametric data sculptures, live audio/visual performances, and immersive installations take many forms, while offering a dramatic rethinking of the physical world, our relationship to time and space, and the creative potential of machines.
About The Peninsula Hotel’s ‘Art in Resonance’ programme: To learn more about The Peninsula Hotel’s ‘Art in Resonance’ programme, please visit https://www.peninsula.com/en/global-pages/art.
