Gold and Magic @ ARKEN Museum of Modern Art

Gold and Magic 

ARKEN Museum of Modern Art,  Ishøj 

Through 8 August 2021 

SYLVIE FLEURY 

Serie ELA 75K (Won't Smudge Off), 2000

© Sylvie Fleury. Photo David Stjernholm

THOMAS J. PRICE 

Untitled (Icon 1), 2017

Courtesy the artist

ARKEN Museum of Modern Art presents the special exhibition Gold and Magic in which golden treasures from The National Museum of Denmark enter into dialogue with works by some of the greatest contemporary artists. The exhibition takes visitors on a journey through many millennia to explore the power of gold and magic.

Gold has fascinated humankind since ancient times. We express ourselves through gold, and the way of using gold mirrors who we are: from the sacrificial offerings of antiquity and the golden altars of the Middle Ages to contemporary art, which uses gold as a vehicle for pointing out the connection between value and identity. In this spring’s major special exhibition, a range of historical artefacts and precious national treasures from the National Museum of Denmark is exhibited at ARKEN, creating an exciting encounter between cultural history and art. A meeting that offers new perspectives on our thousand-year history with gold.

Golden traces in contemporary art

All over the world, artists are currently turning to gold as a means of expression. They use it to tell stories about humanity and our society – and to question issues such as nationalism and conspicuous consumption. In Gold and Magic, international artists like Damien Hirst, Sylvie Fleury, Lorna Simpson, Thomas J. Price, Bill Viola and Ugo Rondinone show how wealth, identity and the exercise of power are closely interwoven, using gold to highlight our eternal pursuit of happiness and beauty. Some artists are particularly preoccupied with the magic and religious aspects of gold, while others use the precious material to address the global colonial history so inextricably linked with gold. By entering into a dialogue with contemporary art at ARKEN, these historical objects take on new significance and a new identity.

UGO RONDINONE

the sun at 12 am, 2019 

Studio Rondinone 

Photo  Courtesy Studio Rondinone and kamel mennour, Paris - London

LORNA SIMPSON 

Momentum, 2011 

© Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth

AI WEIWEI

Circle of Animals - Zodiac Heads (detail), 2010 

ARKEN Museum of Modern Art

Long term loan from the Frahm Collection 

Photo Torben Petersen

Across continents

Gold and Magic takes visitors on a tour around the world. There are golden objects from Colombia, Thailand and Japan, from Danish kings and ordinary Danes. The National Museum of Denmark’s collection demonstrates how gold has travelled with people across continents ever since antiquity – as well as how riches often accumulate in very few hands and in national treasuries. Gold and Magic is the result of an innovative collaboration with the National Museum of Denmark.

The special exhibition presents works by El Anatsui, James Lee Byars, Chris Burden, Eva Steen Christensen, Zhang Ding, Sylvie Fleury, Subodh Gupta, Louis Henderson, Damien Hirst, Alicja Kwade, Runo Lagomarsino, Mercedes Lara, Klara Lilja, Grayson Perry, Thomas J. Price, Ugo Rondinone, Lorna Simpson, Alexander Tovborg, Bill Viola and Ai Weiwei.

ARKEN MUSEUM OF MODERN ART

Skovvej 100, 2635 Ishøj

www.arken.dk

Ai Weiwei @ Mary Boone Gallery, NYC

Ai Weiwei
2016: Roots and Branches
Marie Boone Gallery, New York
5 November - 23 December 2016 

On 5 November 2016, Mary Boone Gallery will open at both its Fifth Avenue and Chelsea locations Ai Weiwei 2016: Roots and Branches, an exhibition of recent works by eminent international artist and human rights activist AI WEIWEI.

The show includes works in a variety of mediums – from ancient wood and porcelain, to modern LEGO bricks, and wallpaper of the Artist’s design.

At the Gallery/Uptown (745 Fifth Avenue), a circular field of 40,000 spouts broken from antique Chinese porcelain teapots fills the main room. Wallpaper with a complex design of an arm with extended middle finger, referencing Ai’s well-known Study of Perspective series of photographs, serves as the backdrop for this installation. Seen in this context, the individual spouts mimic the form of the bent finger, excised and rendered ineffectual.

The Gallery/Downtown (541 West 24 Street), houses the monumental (25 foot high) Tree. Constructed from weathered sections of dead trees that have been brought down from the mountains of Southern China and bolted together in the form of a whole, healthy tree with spreading branches, Tree is a totem that may be seen as a comment on the strength of modern China built from many ancient ethnic groups, or a determined attempt to create something new and vital from what is irrevocably lost. The show also includes new works composed from plastic LEGO toy bricks. Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn recreates with “pixels” of LEGOs Ai’s iconic triptych of black and white photographs depicting himself in the act of destroying a fragile symbol of China’s past. Self-Portrait, another LEGO work, presents an image of Ai Weiwei that adopts the bright color and repetition of Warhol’s silkscreen portraits.

Each location also includes one of Ai’s works made of ancient reclaimed huali wood. Treasure Box is an enlargement of an intricate puzzle-box of sliding and locking compartments, and Garbage Container, modeled after a bin turned on its side, is an elegy to five homeless boys in Guizhou Province who suffocated in a dumpster while trying to stay warm.

Ai Weiwei will have concurrent exhibitions in New York at Lisson Gallery and Jeffrey Deitch. The Mary Boone Gallery exhibition is on view at both Gallery locations – 745 Fifth Avenue and 541 West 24 Street – through 23 December 2016.

Marie Boone Gallery
maryboongallery.com

Ai Weiwei @ Lisson Gallery, NYC

Ai Weiwei
2016: Roots and Branches
Lisson Gallery, New York
5 November – 23 December 2016

For his first solo exhibition with Lisson New York, Ai Weiwei populates the gallery with felled, cast-iron tree trunks, nearly sixteen feet in length, and a series of iron root sculptures set against the backdrop of a new wallpaper installation. Situated among the beams of the High Line exposed entirely in this exhibition for the first time, the seven sculptures on display combine to create a forest of displaced objects and reveal the artist’s interest in tradition and contemporaneity as well as the prevalence of displacement in post-modern societies.

Natural objects – from the sunflower seeds that carpeted Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall in 2010 to his series of porcelain rocks and watermelons – have been an ongoing source of inspiration for Ai Weiwei, with trees recurring as a spiritual motif in his work since 2009. These monumental wooden or iron multipartite sculptures are all composites of different parts of different trees gathered by the artist from various parts of China in reference to the ancient Asian tradition of collecting dry fragments of trees for contemplation of their complex forms.

Fragments also play an important part in Ai Weiwei’s work as they force attention on foundational elements and the most basic units that combine to create a whole. Here, in line with the artist’s worldview, the whole is not greater than the sum of its parts but rather each individual part is equal and of unique importance. This focus on equality is evidenced in recent projects by the artist that take as their starting point the refugee crisis and challenges to freedom of speech.

The iron roots and tree trunks shown in New York are presented in a natural, untreated state, appearing at first glance as organic forms, yet upon closer inspection, reveal their artificiality. Not born of nature but made by human hands, the works, themselves contorted by the surrounding landscape, represent a society uprooted by industrialisation and modernisation, illustrating how progress can often come at the expense of cultural and societal well-being. By eliminating their original function and value, Ai Weiwei imbues the objects with new meaning and forces us to confront them in a new light.
 

Ai Weiwei’s work was recently presented alongside the iconic pop artist Andy Warhol, who Ai Weiwei first encountered when he lived in New York in the late 1980s, in the critically acclaimed touring exhibition ‘Andy Warhol | Ai Weiwei’at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, PA. Palazzo Strozzi’s exhibition ‘AiWeiwei. Libero’, the first retrospective dedicated to the artist in Italy, runs from September 2016 until January 2017, when his work will also be the subject of a major exhibition at the Meijer Gardens in Michigan. In New York, Mary Boone Gallery will also present a parallel solo exhibition of work sharing the title 2016: Roots and Branches, while in London, Lisson Gallery will present Ai Weiwei’s installation Fondation (2011) from 18 November 2016 – 7 January 2017.

LISSON GALLERY
504 West 24th Street
New York 10011
www.lissongallery.com

Expo Une brève histoire de l'avenir, Musée du Louvre, Paris

Une brève histoire de l’avenir 
Musée du Louvre, Paris 
Jusqu'au 4 janvier 2016

Thomas Cole, Le Destin des empires. La Destruction (détail), 1836

Collection de la New York Historical Society 

© The New York Historical Society

Evénement majeur de la programmation de l’automne du musée du Louvre, cette exposition est inspirée du livre éponyme de Jacques Attali, Une brève histoire de l’avenir (Fayard, 2006). Pluridisciplinaire, elle fait dialoguer des œuvres insignes du passé avec des créations contemporaines afin de retracer au présent un récit du passé susceptible d’éclairer notre regard sur l’avenir. Le parcours se déroule autour de quatre thématiques : l’ordonnancement du monde, les grands empires, l’élargissement du monde et le monde d’aujourd’hui. Deux cents œuvres sont ainsi réunies dans une lecture subjective et poétique du passé, imaginée et portée par la création artistique des millénaires précédents mais aussi par quinze œuvres d’artistes contemporains du monde entier, dont des commandes spécifiques. Mark Manders, Tomás Saraceno, Wael Shawky, Camille Henrot, Isabelle Cornaro, Chéri Samba et Ai Weiwei ont ainsi répondu à l’invitation du Louvre.

Une brève histoire de l’avenir associe les contemporains et les anciens, les artistes, les sciences, l’architecture ou encore le cinéma, pour discerner ce qui, dans l’histoire des sociétés disparues, nous renseigne sur les chances et les périls du futur. Au cœur de sa conception figure le dialogue, continu ou discontinu, qu’entretient la pensée de notre temps avec l’avenir, ainsi qu’avec les arts de différentes époques et civilisations.

Ces œuvres illustrent la succession de moments historiques d’expansion et de repli, la construction d’échanges entre individus ou communautés, et la création de divers moyens de communication pour rendre possibles ces échanges.

Conçue par Juan-Felipe Alarçon, architecte muséographe au Louvre, la scénographie offre de valoriser un récit thématique, autour de grandes scansions. Elle ménage aussi des temps de respiration, comme autant de chemins de traverse, créant ainsi des contrepoints poétiques et méditatifs. La mise en lumière, le choix des couleurs, valorisent œuvres anciennes et créations contemporaines.

Une place particulière sera donnée à la médiation des œuvres et à leur mise en perspective, notamment grâce à la création d’un lieu de débats au sein de la dernière salle.

Au même moment, à Bruxelles, les Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique interprètent le même essai dans l’exposition « 2050. Une brève histoire de l’avenir » (11/09/2015 - 24/01/2016). Celle-ci s’attache à l’actualité de la création artistique pour interroger une série de thématiques sociétales ─ de la globalisation à la marchandisation du temps, de la surconsommation au devenir de la planète. Indépendantes mais complémentaires, les deux expositions interrogent donc l’avenir ─ par un regard sur le passé et le présent à Paris, par une approche prospective à Bruxelles ─ et analysent les grandes dynamiques qui traversent et animent les sociétés, depuis les origines jusqu’à l’horizon 2050.

Commissaires de l’exposition : Dominique de Font-Réaulx, conservateur général au musée du Louvre, directrice du musée national Eugène-Delacroix et Jean de Loisy, président du Palais de Tokyo, avec la collaboration de Sandra Adam-Couralet et Martin Kiefer.

Conseiller scientifique : Jacques Attali.

Musée du Louvre 
www.louvre.fr

Ai Weiwei @ Portland Art Museum - Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads: Gold

Ai Weiwei
Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads: Gold
Portland Art Museum
May 23 - September 13, 2015

The installation consists of a dozen gilded bronze sculptures representing the animal symbols from the traditional Chinese zodiac. The artist drew inspiration for the 12 heads from those originally located at Yuanming Yuan (Old Summer Palace), an imperial retreat of palaces and European-style gardens built outside of Beijing in the 18th and 19th centuries by Emperor Qianlong. Designed and engineered by two European Jesuits, Giuseppe Castiglione and Michel Benoit, the heads originally functioned as an ornate fountain clock that would spout water at two-hour intervals.

Once accessible only to the elite of 18th-century Chinese society, the garden was destroyed and looted by Anglo-French troops in 1860 during the Second Opium War, displacing the original zodiac heads. The seven heads known to exist (Monkey, Pig, Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, and Horse) have all been returned to China. Circle of Animals/ Zodiac Heads: Gold engages issues of looting, repatriation, and cultural heritage while expanding upon ongoing themes in Ai’s work of the “fake” and “copy” in relation to the original.

Ai Weiwei (born 1957, Beijing, China) is a renowned contemporary artist, architectural designer, and social activist who employs a wide range of media. He has been openly critical of the Chinese government’s stance on democracy and record of human rights violations, investigated government corruption and coverups, and was held for 81 days at an undisclosed location in 2011. According to the Chinese Foreign Ministry, he is currently prohibited from leaving China without permission.

Ai Weiwei’s Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads collection consists of two series: Bronze and Gold. The installation on view at the Portland Art Museum is one of eight smaller gilded editions, intended for interior display. Another series was produced as large-size in bronze, almost 10 feet high and intended for outdoor display.

The sculptures were showcased at the Pulitzer Fountain at Grand Army Plaza, New York, in May 2011, and since that time they’ve been displayed in museums and other sites around the world, including Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin and The Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego.

“We’re delighted to present this important work by one of the world’s leading contemporary artists,” said Brian Ferriso, The Marilyn H. and Dr. Robert B. Pamplin Jr. Director. “Ai Weiwei’s Circle of Animals reflects the Museum’s commitment to the art of today, and it furthers our mission of bringing the world to Oregon. Ai Weiwei’s work reveals layers of history while bringing attention to current economic, political and collecting issues.”

The Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads: Gold builds on a strong run of contemporary art exhibitions at the Portland Art Museum. In 2014, the Portland Art Museum was the first museum in North America to exhibit Richard Mosse’s groundbreaking installation, The Enclave. Recent exhibitions in the Contemporary Art Series funded by the Miller Meigs Endowment for Contemporary Art have focused on significant artists including Mike Kelley (2012), Cindy Sherman (2012), Sherrie Levine (2013), and Joel Shapiro (2014).

This exhibition is presented at the Portland Art Museum courtesy of Heather James Fine Art, and curated by Brian J. Ferriso, The Marilyn H. and Dr. Robert B. Pamplin Jr. Director.

PORTLAND ART MUSEUM
1219 SW Park Avenue, Portland, OR 97205
www.portlandartmuseum.org

Ai Weiwei at La Virreina Image Centre, Barcelona

Ai Weiwei: On the Table
La Virreina Image Centre, Barcelona
5 November 2014 - 1 February 2015

On the Table. Ai Weiwei offers a comprehensive view of the artist's life and work through the display of a variety of artworks and materials, set up to match the scale of La Virreina Image Centre.

The exhibition aims to give an idea of the scope of Ai Weiwei's artistic career, from his beginnings in 1980s New York to his present-day status as the best-known and most influential Chinese artist in the world. Work by this media-savvy activist calling for greater freedom in China can now be found in leading contemporary art museums and collections worldwide.

Ai Weiwei makes use of a number of artistic practices, including photography and documentary film, sculpture, design and architecture, in operations that transcend formats and disciplines to create images that infiltrate and propagate through social networks and popular culture. In addition to several key pieces for appreciating this artist’s work, the show at La Virreina Image Centre also presents unseen work, new productions and installations by Ai Weiwei specially designed for this exhibition.

Curator: Rosa Pera

AI WEIWEI

Ai Weiwei is well known for his longstanding confrontation with the Chinese communist government and for his large-scale installations in leading contemporary art museums and events worldwide. He works on a global scale with any format and medium that comes to hand—or simply invents new ones.

A staunch defender in the struggle for freedom, he has used his work as a potent mouthpiece for speaking out against the unseen repression and censorship as China opens up to capitalist markets. As an artist, he strives tirelessly to raise critical awareness in society.

On the Table. Ai Weiwei aims to give a comprehensive overview of his work by exploring some of his best-known pieces alongside previously unseen work. Ai Weiwei makes use of a wide range of techniques—including photography, architecture, video, sculpture, graphic design, installations, objects and music videos, among others—but central to all his work is the role of the image as a construction and vehicle for reality. He then uses this to explore the tensions between truth and lies, evidence and ambiguity, control and freedom, politics, art, power and society.

Ai Weiwei sees art as a device for striking up dialogues within various contexts, comparing and contrasting different traditions and visions, negotiating, dissecting, projecting and sharing: like a table on which we can lay out our credentials and show our cards, discovering what is underneath and, if necessary, turning the tables.

Rosa Pera

La Virreina Image Centre and La Fábrica have prepared a catalogue to accompany the exhibition On the Table. Ai Weiwei. It offers an insightful rereading of the artist’s work and runs to 180 pages, including over 240 pictures of 42 pieces. The idea, design, editing and sequence of images were all personally overseen by Ai Weiwei himself. The catalogue also includes an interview with the artist in his studio in Beijing by Llucià Homs, director of La Virreina Image Centre, and an essay by Rosa Pera, curator of the show, entitled Image and Power in Three Movements and a Device.

La Virreina Centre de la Imatge
Palau de la Virreina
La Rambla, 99. 08002 Barcelona
http://ajuntament.barcelona.cat/lavirreina/en/

Fuck Off 2, Curated by Ai Weiwei, Feng Boyi & Mark Wilson at Groninger Museum, Groningen

Fuck Off 2

Curated by Ai Weiwei, Feng Boyi & Mark Wilson

Groninger Museum, Groningen

26 May - 17 November 2013

The Groninger Museum presents the exhibition FUCK OFF 2, curated by artist and activist Ai Weiwei, art critic Feng Boyi and chief curator of the Groninger Museum, Mark Wilson. This show, which includes 37 contemporary Chinese artists and artist groups, contemplates and questions the current sociological, environmental, legal, and political climate in China today.

The exhibition is a sequel to FUCK OFF, the ground-breaking show staged in Shanghai in 2000 by Ai Weiwei and Feng Boyi, which was quickly censored by the authorities as it was considered too sensitive with its radical content.

Thirteen years later, the lack of artistic freedom in China and the repressive attitude toward individual actions by the government make FUCK OFF 2 especially relevant today.

FUCK OFF 2 

A catalogue was published in conjunction with the exhibition, 

with contributions by the curators and the artists.
(c) Groninger Museum 

Participating artists: Ai Weiwei, Chen Yujin & Chen Yufan, Cheng Li, Deng Dafei & He Hai, Double Fly Art Center, He Chi & Xiong Huang Group, He Xiangyu, He Yunchang, Huang Lin, Ji Wenyu & Zhu Weibing, Jiang Bo, Jin Feng, Jing Kewen, Li Binyuan, Li Songsong, Liang Shuo, Lin Zhipeng, Luo Yang, Ma Qiusha, Ma Yi, Mao Tongqiang, Meng Huang, Qin Ga, Ren Hang, Wu Huaying & Liu Xiaoyuan, Wu Junyong, Xi Mei, Xia Xing, Ye Haiyan, Zhang Dali, Zhao Zhao, Zuoxiao Zuzhou.

Ai Weiwei & the Groninger Museum: The Groninger Museum hosted the second solo museum exhibition by Ai Weiwei in 2008. The museum has also acquired the works WATER MELONS, 2007 and GRAPES, 2009 directly from the artist for the Museum Collection.

GRONINGER MUSEUM

Museumeiland 1, 9711 ME Groningen, The Netherlands

www.groningermuseum.nl

Liu Wei & Ai Weiwei at Faurschou Foundation, Beijing

Liu Wei & Ai Weiwei: Works from the Collection
Faurschou Foundation, Beijing
13 October 2011 - 26 February 2012

The current show at Faurschou Foundation is the first show of works from the Faurschou Foundation collection, and thus marks the transition from commercial gallery to art foundation that Faurschou has now undergone. With the establishment of Faurschou Foundation, Luise and Jens Faurschou are realizing a long-held dream of devoting all their time, skills and networks to expanding and developing their collection of contemporary art, and creating exhibitions of a high international standard, both at the existing premises here in Beijing, and at the new exhibition space in Copenhagen which will open next year in September with a solo show by Cai Guo-Qiang.

In the future the exhibitions at Faurschou Foundation in Beijing and in Copenhagen will take their point of departure in the collection, and Luise and Jens Faurschou will be creating new exhibitions in collaboration with some of the best contemporary artists, curators, museums and galleries all over the world. For many years it has been the dream of Luise and Jens Faurschou to focus on the collection and its development, and the possibility of showing it. On the basis of the results and the collection created over the years, it has now become possible to realize this dream.

Faurschou Foundation currently presents works from the collection by Ai Weiwei and Liu Wei.

Entering the gallery the viewer is almost walking into Map of China, a large sculpture made out of Iron wood (Tieli wood) that Ai Weiwei has collected from dismantled temples of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911).

Many of Ai Weiwei's works from the past decade are made of local materials and of antique Chinese objects, Neolithic pottery, tables and chairs from the Ming and Qing Dynasties, wood, doors and windows from demolished temples and traditional houses, freshwater pearls, tea, marble, stone, bamboo etc. - 'ready-mades' trans¬lated into a conceptual, post-minimalist idiom.

Ai Weiwei points to the loss of culture by transforming the historical objects into something new - into moving and highly sensual contemporary artworks which thanks to their aesthetic beauty recirculate the meaning and history of these valuable cultural artifacts in the context of contemporary China.

From his recent grand-scale installation at TATE Modern in London earlier this year a field of porcelain handmade Sunflower Seeds covers the floor.

At TATE Modern Ai Weiwei installed a 100-ton thick layer of sun¬flower seeds on the floor - 100 million seeds - all made of porcelain produced and painted by hand in Jingdezhen.

The number of seeds is overwhelming, and yet 100 million is not even that many in the Chinese context. It is precisely in China that it is possible to produce such a labour-intensive work - and the work is very much about the relationship between the mass and the individual, and about China's increasing dominance in the world economy.

Sunflower Seeds is an incredibly beautiful, poetic work, simple, and with many layers of meaning connected to Chinese history.

Ai Weiwei has in the past years been engaged in the loss of lives after the Sichuan Earthquake. Namelist of student earthquake victims found by the citizen investigation, 2008 - is the names of students who died in the Sichuan earthquake in 2008. The list has been collected by the citizen investigation volunteers. The date for the work is open ended as not all the identities of the students have been found out. Some names are not able to be found as entire families have disappeared after the earthquake. The government has never revealed the full list of victims of the earthquake, but only a number. The citizen investigation volunteer's aim is to give each number a name.

In the second part of the exhibition space - Don't Touch by Liu Wei hangs suspended from the ceiling.

Composed of sewn together ox-hides, Liu Wei's rendering of the Potala Palace in Tibet, Don't Touch, is the largest work to date from the artist's series of sculpted dog chews representing a disarray of global headquarters. The mock-ups demonstrate Liu Wei's early interest in questions of power, the relationship between landscape and architecture and the material condition of the visual.

Standing higher than any other palace in the world at over 3,700 meters above sea level, the Potala Palace is a conspicuous but almost passé religious, political, and cultural symbol, presented to the world with pride and yet a stain on the reputation of many. Perhaps dispelling politicization, perhaps creating a fantastical pseudo-religious object, perhaps pointing to a dystopian mutation stemming from a larger social lack of spiritual direction, we can't be sure. But Liu Wei "lets it hang", and advises, irony intended, "Don't touch".

FAURSCHOU FOUNDATION

www.faurschou.com

Ai Weiwei, Groninger Museum, Groningen

Ai Weiwei

Groninger Museum, Groningen

2 March - 23 November 2008

The Groninger Museum presents a solo exhibition of the work of AI WEIWEI (1957), one of the most important Chinese artists of the present time. Recently, he was involved in the design of the Olympic Stadium in Beijing. This solo exhibition represents his debut in the Groninger Museum.

The work of Ai Weiwei consists of performances, installations and architecture. From 1978 onward, Ai Weiwei manifested himself in the Beijing art world as a member of the artists association called Xingxing (the Stars). When they disbanded in 1983, he settled in New York. In 1993 he returned to Beijing, and from that moment onward he made use traditional Chinese elements in his work, exploring the mechanisms of political and national symbolism in a provoking manner. For one of his works he allowed an urn from the Han dynasty to fall to the ground and break. Other objects of national pride also tumbled from his hands. He painted ancient vases with the Coca Cola logo, or coated them in bright colours. He subsequently presented them as cheap counterfeits. In 1997 he founded the China Arts Archives and Warehouse, which offers a platform to young and experimental artists.

His fascination for ceramics is the central theme on this occasion. Ceramic art is a medium that permeates his whole oeuvre and is strongly connected to Chinese cultural identity. One of his most recent works, Pillars, is on display in the Coop Himmelb(l)au Pavilion. This work consists of a forest of man-sized vases amongst which visitors can stroll.

A catalogue accompanies the exhibition at the Groninger Museum:

AI WEIWEI

(c) Ai Weiwei / Groninger Museum

GRONINGER MUSEUM

Museumeiland 1, 9711 ME Groningen, The Netherlands

www.groningermuseum.nl

Chinese Video: Chord Changes in the Megalopolis at Morono Kiang Gallery, Los Angeles

Chinese Video: Chord Changes in the Megalopolis
Ai Weiwei, Cao Fei, Wang Wei, Liu Ding, Xu Zhen, Wang Jian Wei, Chen Chieh-Jen, Dong Jun, Lin Yilin, Yang Zhenzhong, Zhao Liang, Jiang Zhi
Curated by Kevin Power
Morono Kiang Gallery, Los Angeles
September 13, 2007 - November 17, 2007

Morono Kiang Gallery presents its third exhibition, Chord Changes in the Megalopolis, a group show featuring the work of twelve video artists. This will be the first time that many of the videos will be shown in the U.S.

It is a monstrous clich to argue that China is in a process of massive change: it is, and in many aspects, it isn't. That is to say, change as a visual phenomenon is rapid, but as a psychological process its pace is much slower. There are zones of curious and intense frictionsideological, social, and economicbetween what was and what is, what may be and what will not be. Chord Changes in the Megalopolis seeks to look at the way in which a number of Chinese video artists are living, documenting, reflecting upon, and conceptualizing these changes. Many of the videos focus on sociocultural changes and the redefinitions of social status and ambition in the new frenetically expanding megalopolis, with its changing urban landscape and its concentrated takes on fast, modern, consumer living.

Videos include Ai Weiwei's Beijing: Chang'an Boulevard, a strangely obsessive but astutely conceptual piece dealing with Beijing's ring road system, which stands as a register of growth, social zoning, traffic density, human loss, and bewilderment, as well as Cao Fei's penetrating and poetic piece on the life of a milkman and her more parodic play with cultural identity and consumer change in Hip-Hop. These works provide paradigmatic statements that frame the diverse ways in which the artists included in this show represent the rhythms and momentums of social change.

This exhibition does not pretend to define ideological oppositions, but rather it seeks to show the diversity of readings and positions being taken by Chinese artists as they react to and analyze the particularities of their own circumstances and interests. The work varies from direct but poetically evocative documentary-style reportage to subtly worked metaphors. Xu Zhen creates an ironic tongue-in-cheek ideological deconstruction of frontier tensions in 18 Days, a work that is at the same time an existential adventure; Dong Jun provides sensitive register of the life of an art school model who, now eighty-four years old and economically reduced to subsistence living, has a passionate desire to avoid all thought yet remains elegant in her gestures; Chen Chieh-Jen re-creates in a wondrous, almost Bergmanesque fashion the industrial experience in an abandoned textile factory that he restores "momentarily" to life. Wang Wei shows two interrelated works, the first of which documents the life of a family of brick sellers who collect their bricks by demolishing buildings in the morning and then have to sell them off before nightfall because they have no storage space. The second video resituates this sociological document as the artist asks the same family to build a brick wall in a gallery as an art installation; the artist has negotiated with them and agreed to sell the bricks back to them at half price as one of the conditions of the realization of the piece.

These works reflect the pulse and the radical nature of the changes taking place in Chinese society. Some artists choose to do so by examining dramatic psychological dislocations that have disturbed former definitions of identity, as in Liu Ding's Stop, or Wang Jan Wei's Dodge, and Lin Yilin's One Day, a video of the artist wandering the city with his leg handcuffed to his wrist.

These video works have clear elements of social critique, but above all they are interrogative, perceptive, and personal.

Kevin Power is Chair of American Literature at the University of Alicante (Spain) and is also a Visiting Professor at Instituto Superior de Arte (Havana, Cuba), as well a lecturer at other universities in South America. From 2003 to 2005 he was assistant director of the Museo Nacional Reina Sofa in Madrid. He has worked as a critic and curator for the last twenty years.

MORONO KIANG GALLERY
218 West 3rd Street, Bradbury Building
Los Angeles, CA 90013
www.moronokiang.com