Audemars Piguet Commissions Renée Levi’s Monumental Public Artwork

The language of artistic patronage has long distinguished those houses possessed of genuine cultural stewardship from mere commercial enterprises. Audemars Piguet, a manufacture steeped in the aesthetics of precision and enduring craftsmanship, has deepened its commitment to contemporary art through a compelling new collaboration that speaks to the intersection of creation, materiality and architectural presence.

Renée Levi, an artist whose three decades of practice have established her as a singular voice in examining the inseparable relationship between art and its spatial context, has realised a monumental two panel work titled ‘September’ at the Hayward Gallery in London. Commissioned in partnership with Audemars Piguet Contemporary, this constitutes Levi’s first large scale public artwork in the United Kingdom, a distinction that underscores both her significance and the manufacture’s discerning eye for artistic vision.

What emerges is a work born from the most literal of collaborations. At Audemars Piguet’s Fab Lab, the space wherein the Manufacture has long prototyped transformative ideas, Levi engaged directly with the manufacture’s technical expertise to develop the structural supports for her composition. The solution arrived upon speaks to an elegant marriage of necessity and aesthetics: an industrial mesh, specifically adapted to withstand London’s capricious climate whilst preserving the integrity and luminosity of her painted surfaces.

The methodology underlying ‘September’ reveals the artist’s disciplined approach. Produced in sections before being assembled on site, the work exists simultaneously as a singular, unified composition and as an expandable series, extending the possibilities of what Levi terms her continuous painting practice. This technique, rooted in her early training and refined through the particular demands of her new material, represents a distillation of artistic principle into physical form.

The Hayward Gallery’s uncompromising Brutalist façade provides an architectural counterpoint of considerable power. The austere geometry of the structure creates a dialogue with Levi’s abstract interventions, each element enriching the other, a conversation between permanence and contemporary vision that extends Audemars Piguet’s longstanding commitment to supporting artists who interrogate fundamental questions about creation, space and enduring aesthetic value.

The commission exemplifies how a manufacture rooted in horological mastery and mechanical excellence may equally command the language of contemporary artistic patronage, recognising in the work of transformative artists the same qualities that animate fine watchmaking: precision, integrity, and an uncompromising commitment to vision.

Imagery courtesy of Audemars Piguet (@audemarspiguet).