BMW 7 Series Becomes Living Artwork At Contemporary Istanbul

The new BMW 7 Series has traded the fast lane for a gallery floor. Bavaria’s flagship saloon sits at the heart of SYMBIOSIS, an immersive installation by the Tokyo and London artist duo A.A.Murakami, staged at the 21st edition of Contemporary Istanbul. The work arrived at Tersane Istanbul with a VIP preview on 23 September, having previously appeared at Art Basel. Public days run from 24 to 27 September.

SYMBIOSIS borrows its name from biology, where two unlike organisms share a life. Azusa Murakami and Alexander Groves build sculptural, engineered forms and then let transient matter loose around them. Mist drifts, bubbles form and burst, light shifts. Airflow, temperature, gravity and pure chance shape what visitors see, so the piece never repeats itself. The pair call this approach Ephemeral Tech, a deliberate move away from screens, projections and LED walls.

The link to the car is more than staging. BMW Symbiotic Drive treats driver and machine as one coordinated system rather than two parties negotiating. AI-supported assistance reads intent and helps with acceleration, braking and steering, so inputs and responses blur into a single action. That philosophy sits at the core of the Neue Klasse, and the installation turns an engineering brief into something you can walk through.

The 7 Series itself earns its place. Monolithic bodywork, the illuminated Iconic Glow kidney grille and slim crystal headlights give the saloon a commanding stance under gallery lighting. Inside, BMW Panoramic iDrive, the Passenger Display and the reworked Theatre Screen handle the digital side, wrapped in materials chosen for touch as much as looks. This mid-life update marks the point where Neue Klasse technology starts filtering into cars already on the road, which makes the seventh-generation flagship a useful preview of what follows.

Borusan Otomotiv, which represents BMW in Türkiye, brought the piece to Istanbul and describes it as a meeting point for technology, design and art. Chief executive Hakan Tiftik framed the pairing as a way to show where the brand is heading. The partnership fits a pattern stretching back more than 50 years, from the Art Car Collection to Gallery Weekend Berlin, the Kochi-Muziris Biennale and Art Basel, with Borusan now also backing the Türkiye Pavilion at the 61st Venice Biennale.