(repost from February 2013)
I couldn’t/didn’t want to believe the hype.
How could one artist both sculpt 12 heads of animals of the Chinese zodiac and do a large chandelierish-lit cube, and both of them turn out interesting and good?
I assumed that Ai’s fame was mostly due to the incessant hype about his political situation, not to mention his skillful self-promotion. The fact that he works with so many different forms and media made me doubly suspicious.
A major part of the exhibition at the Hirshhorn, both as you first enter and later on, are his color photographs of redevelopment and building sites in China. Slightly disorienting because the pictures are plastered together in giant collages on the walls and….floors. No one wants to walk on art! I can’t find any pics of that on-line, so you’ll have to use your imagination.
Ai’s black & white photography is also a major feature of the exhibition. His pictures line the walls of a few of the rooms, and some of them are interesting, but honestly, if they weren’t part of the larger whole, I probably wouldn’t have given them a second glance.
The bad:
A surveillance camera carved out of marble left me cold.
And to get the worst of the bad out of the way, there’s this:
I can’t imagine any context in which that would be considered as anything other than juvenile 🙁
The rest was either good, very good, or at the very least intriguing, and occasionally infuriating (in a good way).
Here is “Moon Chests,” seven of 51 (IIRC) constructions he made from recycled wood from a temple (recycling/repurposing, and reclaiming the past are major themes in Ai’s work). Fun to play peekaboo from one end to another.
Teahouse. Three small (a couple of feet tall) houses made out of tea, on a “lawn” of tea. A contrast between the (desired) solidity of dwellings and the material they’re constructed of. And that lovely scent of tea….
Bowl of Pearls: From a distance, it looks like three bowls of rice, and should just be a rather crass joke of scale, but was somehow affecting:
This is “Harmony,” a pile of plastic crabs. For some reason, I found this annoying.
Wenchuan Steel Rebar:
This is a large piece, about 40 or 50 feet long, and my favorite of the show.
Rebar is used to strengthen concrete, so it’s supportive, both literally and figuratively. But here it’s naked, stripped of (or so I thought, never has been subjected to) its role of support, and now supports itself, which it can easily do because of its weight and the ridges on the side of every bar, which makes a pile of rebar more solid than it might be otherwise. In places it’s built up into ridges (and thus valleys) that made me want to walk on it in soft-soled shoes, to feel the ridges and see if maybe some of them would collapse a bit under my weight. And that long gash in the middle….I wanted to sit down on the side of the gash, and run my fingers along the ends of the rebar, like running my fingers over the banks of a stream.
The label explains that the rebar was reclaimed from a schoolhouse that collapsed during the Sichuan earthquake of 2008, and we were meant to feel sympathy for the children. I still like my (admittedly fanciful) interpretation 🙂
Unfortunately, I can’t find a pic of my other favorite piece. Hidden in plain sight, it’s light blue porcelain lizard, maybe 7 or 8 inches long. But it’s kind of a mutant, with chopped-off veins exposed, and a single leaf growing on its back. Exquisitely detailed…and confusing because it’s another beautiful object in a completely different medium.
So, anyhoo…..a fascinating exhibit, and to answer the Telegraph’s question, I’d say yes, Ai Weiwei’s art is any good.
-R