BMW Art Cars are taking over Shoreditch

From Saturday, the NCP car park in east London will be taken over by a series of BMW ‘art cars’, showing vehicles given a very unique twist. All of tem have ben adapted over the 35 years in which the BMW Art Car project has been running in a collaboration between BMW and the ICA.

Among the works on show will be cars by Alexander Calder, Frank Stella, Ernst Fuchs, Robert Rauschenberg, M.J. Nelson, Ken Done, Matazo Kayama, César Manrique, Jeff Koons, A.R. Penck, Esther Mahlangu, Sandro Chia and Jenny Holzer.

We love the bright, bold blocks of colour on Cesar Manruieq’s car, which was created in 1990:

And the tribal look of A.R Penck’s 1991 model is pretty striking too:

For Hockney’s piece, he decided to focus on the car’s interiors to create its exteriors. ‘BMW gave me a model of the car and I looked at it time and time again. Finally, I thought it would be a good idea to show the car as if one could see inside,’ he says.

For his 1979 creation, Andy Warhol looked to velocity to inform his work. He says, ‘I have tried to give a vivid depiction of speed. If a car is really fast, all contours and colours will become blurred.’

Jeff Koons, meanwhile, took something of a JG Ballard approach. ‘These race cars are like life, they are powerful and there is a lot of energy. You can participate with it, add to it and let yourself transcend with its energy’, he says.

BMW Art Car Collection will be on display from 21 July – 4 August at NCP Multi-Storey Car Park, 35 Great Eastern Street, London EC2A