ROLLS-ROYCE PRESENTS THE FIRST ‘INSPIRING GREATNESS’ INTERVIEW SERIES WITH MEDIA ARTIST REFIK ANADOL

Inspiring greatness lies at the very heart of Rolls-Royce Motor Cars’ brand ethos. From hand-building the epitome of true luxury, to engaging and servicing the needs of discerning clients all over the world, Rolls-Royce Motor Cars inspires greatness, every step of the way.

In the first of a series of films created by the marque, Rolls-Royce speaks with media artist Refik Anadol, a recent fellow of MUSE, The Rolls-Royce Art Programme, to explore his own personal inspiration and to hear his approach in advancing our understanding of the world around us by using art and technology as his medium.

Anadol’s recent digital artwork, entitled Art of Perfection: Data Painting, used 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 work enjoyed a worldwide public debut in the artist’s hometown during Frieze Los Angeles earlier this year, exhibited at The Peninsula Beverly Hills.

Art of Perfection: Data Painting consists of an LED ‘canvas’, conveying a unique digital 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 Bespoke commission. 

Torsten Müller-Ötvös, Chief Executive Officer, Rolls-Royce Motor Cars, commented: “It gives me great pleasure to hear from Refik Anadol regarding his captivating interpretation of the paint colours derived at the Home of Rolls-Royce in Goodwood, England, over the past 10 years. Now, more so than ever as the Surface Finish Centre rests amid the Covid-19 pandemic, Anadol’s artwork allows me to reflect on the great things that have come from our Global Centre of Luxury Manufacturing Excellence, whilst we focus our attention on many inspiring things to come in the future.”

Artist Refik Anadol commented: “For an artist working with technology, when I got the opportunity to work with MUSE, The Rolls-Royce Art Programme, it was one of those rare moments in life. When I visited the plant and saw the process of creating the motor cars, I witnessed an invisible world of perfection – humanly perfect, not just machine perfect – an incredible amount of ideation, technology and feelings embedded into the art of perfection. That was a pure inspiration.” 

In his practice, Anadol 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.

Art of Perfection: Data Painting will be presented on permanent display at Rolls-Royce’s global headquarters in Goodwood, England. The film can be viewed at www.rolls-roycemotorcars.com.

Notes:

• 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 2,000 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 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 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 computerised 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.