Ai Weiwei
dal 17/11/2011 al 11/2/2012
Segnalato da
17/11/2011
Ai Weiwei
Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek
The exhibition at Louisiana is showing three large, striking works: Forever, 2003, Fountain of Light, 2007 and Trees, 2009-2010, as well as a number of films. The artist expresses himself in a distinctive, simple formal idiom, in a dialogue with factual history and personal memory. His art relates to the universal human condition and insists on respect for the individual.
It is with great pleasure that Louisiana, as planned, is able present an exhibition with Ai Weiwei and a number of the Chinese artist’s works from the years 2003-2010 – despite the authorities’ detention and isolation of the artist for several months earlier in the year.
Ai Weiwei (b. 1957) has to a rare degree alternated in his practice between traditional physical artworks, conceptual projects, social activities, design and architecture. This has given his oeuvre the character of a compass that registers the currents of the age in art globally, and stimulates discussions of the role of art in his native China.
Ai Weiwei expresses himself in a distinctive, simple formal idiom, in a dialogue with factual history and personal memory. His art relates to the universal human condition and insists on respect for the individual.
By using traditional Chinese materials and craftsmanship as well as modern industrial technology, Ai Weiwei’s works not only reflect and thematize the main currents of the twentieth century – its dreams and monuments; at the same time they attempt, like all living art, to leave a mark in the eternally flowing present.
The exhibition at Louisiana is showing three large, striking works: Forever, 2003, Fountain of Light, 2007 and Trees, 2009-2010, as well as a number of films.
Forever, the earliest work in the exhibition, has connections back to the artist’s fascination with the father-figure of conceptual art, Marcel Duchamp. 42 bicycles of the ‘Forever’ brand, the favourite means of transport of the Chinese for decades, have been ingeniously stacked in a cylindrical tower, a ‘cycle’ that goes nowhere, since either handlebars or pedals have been removed.
The work Fountain of Light is a shining seven-metre tall crystal tower, spectacularly placed in the Louisiana Sculpture Park. The work refers to the Russian architect Vladimir Tatlin’s (1885-1953) never-finished tower, created for the Third International in 1919 during the Russian Civil War.
Trees, four trees stretching from floor to ceiling in the museum’s Large Hall, consist of trunks and branches slotted together from individual pieces of Chinese camphorwood. Individually they stand there without growing, but in the assembled form they unfold impressively and transform dead matter into a metaphor of growth and life. Among the trees there are two smaller rock formations, Rocks, independent works in blue-painted porcelain, forming an overall work that challenges the viewer’s idea of the archetypally Chinese.
In addition the exhibition presents three of Ai Weiwei’s films in the documentary genre, showing how the artist works as an activist. In the films the artist raises a kind of monument to his own time by demonstrating the strength of the individual.
Louisiana Talks
A 35-minute interview with Ai Weiwei, recorded at Louisiana in connection with the artist’s visit in December 2010, will also be on display. Christian Lund, the organizer of the literature festival, talks to Ai Weiwei. The recording is part of a new series of interviews, Louisiana Talks, which the museum is launching in the course of 2012.
The exhibition will be shown subsequently at the De Pont Museum in Tilburg, The Netherlands.
Press contact:
Susanne Hartz Tlf. +45 88435052 Mobil: +45 28585052 Mail: press@louisiana.dk
Louisiana Museum of Modern Art
Gl. Strandvej 13 3050 Humlebæk
Hours: Tuesday – Friday 11-22 Saturday and Sunday 11-18 Public Holidays 11-18 Monday closed
Admission DKK 95