Renaissance
Click on the below catalogue pages to see enlargements and information onthe works.

 

 

 

 

 Ai Weiwei keeps from his childhood and adolescence the bitterness of a undeservedly hard early education. He was one year old when his entire family was sent to north-east China, then to Xinjiang province in north-west China as aresult of the anti-intellectual campaign. When he was born in Beijing in 1957, his father Ai Qing was a Communist literary celebrity. Forced to discard his activity to do a heavy physical job cleaning public toilets in a small and poor village in a very remote area, his father was only able to regain his position as a poet after the political situation allowed him to return to the capital after twenty years, in 1978.
Ai Weiwei enrolled as a student at the Beijing Film Institute when his family returned to Beijing and formed a group together with other intellectuals and artists the next year, named 'The Stars'. The works by the artists who featured in the wild exhibition they mounted near the China Art Gallery revealed their willingness to achieve individual freedom of expression. One year later the China Art Gallery hosted their first official exhibition. Soon afterwards the group broke up and Weiwei left for the States. He devoted his time to looking around, visiting museums and reading books which became accessible after he learnt English, but he only produced a few works during this long sojourn of twelve years.
Since his return from the States in 1993, Weiwei has gradually been finding languages of his own. While having no knowledge in these fields, he used various media for different means of expression.
The first language was: the art edition. He worked on editing and publishing three works entitled consecutively Black Cover (1994), White Cover (1995) and Gray Cover (1997). These circulars contain information never previously divulged, on works in process by artists from the East Village, a new district in north-east Beijing which welcomed the artistic community to live and work there. He also concentrated on interviews, the presentation of works made by both China-based and overseas artists, and articles, never previously published in China, on the work of established foreign artists in whom he is interested. He edited Chinese Artists, Texts and Interviews: Chinese Contemporary Art Awards (2002). This book deals, in images and writings from interviews or artists' essays, with the work of the twenty-three artists who since 1998 have won the CCAA awards.
Ai Weiwei has participated in the curatorial work of the China Art Archives and Warehouse since its foundation. Co-founded with Hans Van Dijk (researcher and promoter of contemporary Chinese art) and Frank Uytterhaegen (present owner
of the Modern Chinese Art Foundation), the CAAW, primarily by its structure, offers a new conception of the exhibitionspace, adapting a high-ceiling hall with intimate areas for experimental art, and secondly, by means of its human resources, aims to establish durable links with artists based in China. As a member of the jury for the China Contemporary Art Awards he also selects works of art.
Fuck Off (or An Uncooperative Approach, to give its literal English translation) - the title of the satellite show on the fringe of the third Shanghai Biennale in 2000 (co-organized with the associate curator Feng Boyi, critic and member of the Chinese Artists Association) - remains one of the shows which has attracted most attention. The last sentence of the foreword in the catalogue published under the same title states that 'Perhaps there is nothing that exists 'on-site', but what will last forever is the very uncooperativeness with any system of power discourse'. Like the exhibition currently on at the Modern Chinese Art Foundation - Gent under the title Degenerated, the works reflect the value of the independent and critical stance of their author more than other aspects.
His third language is architecture. Weiwei built his own studio and the offices and exhibition space for the China Art Archives and Warehouse, using construction materials of local origin as concrete grey or red bricks. The link with architectural concepts also becomes evident in his sculptural works. In Between (2000) is constructed within the actual structure of the Soho New Town compound, which was opened by the Beijing real-estate promoter Pan Shiyi.
Ai Weiwei is increasingly engaged in architecture since his recent collaboration with Herzog and de Meuron - a duo of Basel-based architects - as a consultant for major projects such as the National Stadium for the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing and the Jindong New Development Area in Jinhua in Zhejiang province.
His entire oeuvre comprises works which refer to great masters or artistic canons.
In Marcel Duchamp he finds a prominent model among the masters of art history, whose work corresponds closely to his own understanding of art, which has more to do with human sciences.
For instance, the works shown here, Violin (1985) and the One-Man Shoe (1987), representative works from the period spent in the States, could be seen respectively as an echo of In Advance of the Broken Arm (1915) and the Comb (1916). He redefines everyday objects by disrupting their original functions. The head of the violin turning into a shovel handle like the snow shovel hanging from the ceiling, or a pair of shoes forming one shoe and the gray steel dog-comb on which a nonsensical sentence is inscribed, 'Trois ou quatre gouttes de hauteur n'ont rien à voir avec la sauvagerie'.

The most respectful homage can be found in Forever Bicycles, which is directly inspired by Bicycle Wheel (1913), made from a bicycle wheel and fork mounted upside down on a kitchen stool, whose description appears to be the first formulation of what constitutes a 'Readymade'.
The question of authority - also suggested by Duchamp, who began to play with it by producing works from a distance, asking his sister to sign on his behalf - remains constant. Most of his works display the savoir-faire of craftsmen, experts in different fields such as furniture-makers, sculptors - such as the Newspaper Reader (2004), made in cooperation with Liang Shuo and currently on display at the Bern Kunsthalle - or ceramists he hires, whereby his artistic work ends once he has initiated the work. The issue of authority is also raised in the concept of the replicas he produces in the Blue-and-White Series (1996).
The study of and interest in classical antiquities seem an unconscious way of reviving literature and art.
On his return to the capital in the mid-90's, he discovered antique ceramics, porcelain and furniture at archeological excavation sites as a metaphor for antique markets.
Ai Weiwei, in the traditional gesture for dealing with the remains, destroys (Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn, 1995); reconstructs (Furniture Series, 1997-2000) from existing ancient pieces; restores (Whitewash, 1993-2000), by hiding the marks of time; and copies, by using the same materials and techniques as in the past (Map of China Series, 2003-2004). Inheriting China's tradition of fine carpentry, these pieces are constructed using the mortise-and-tenon method and are made from the hardwood - often used for its density - called iron wood (tieli or Mesua Ferrea to give its scientific name). Ai Weiwei also preserves (Still Life, 1993-2000) - the tools from Neolithic times are properly archived; he adds to the national cultural heritage list (Feet and Hands, 2003) - reclaimed fragments of destroyed ancient stone sculptures are here displayed on pedestals.
In the course of his life, he has always approached the various situations and occasions with humility and an open mind. He does not give one medium privileges over any other, but uses whatever is necessary as a mediator between Reality and Individuals, consistently attempting to facilitate access to other paths towards a rebirth of thought.
In the same discourse, Ai Weiwei, as the artistic director of the China Art Archives and Warehouse, joins the Modern Chinese Art Foundation to rethink the co-operation between the two entities so as to lead to a renaissance.

-Carole Lauvergne, Gent, April 2004

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