Ai Weiwei in the Los Angeles Times

28 September 2018

Review by Christopher Knight Review: ‘Ai Weiwei: Life Cycle’ brings tradition and transformation to the Marciano Art Foundation in the LOS ANGELES TIMES.

Seedbed, boneyard, vessel.

The three primary elements of a new, somewhat imbalanced exhibition by sculptor and Conceptual artist Ai Weiwei speak to fundamentals of birth, death and transformation. “Life Cycle,” as the show is titled, opens Friday at the Marciano Art Foundation. With one new large-scale work and two earlier installations, it is, remarkably, the celebrated Berlin-based Chinese artist’s first major Los Angeles show.

The seedbed, “Sunflower Seeds,” is a vast field composed of tons of black, white and gray seeds, spread smooth and flat in an enormous, 4,000 square-foot rectangle with thickly beveled edges. Shown in the foundation’s cavernous Theater Gallery, it is a version of the work Ai showed in the Turbine Hall at London’s Tate Modern in 2010. Each tiny seed, actually a bit of porcelain hand-formed and painted, is a kind of surrogate for the individuals who collectively form the mass of humanity.

Together they bristle with energy – actual and potential...

Ai Weiwei at the Public Art Fund

12 October 2017 to 11 February 2018

Solo exhibition Good Fences Make Good Neighbors at the Public Art Fund, NYC, NY.

This October, as a highlight of its 40th anniversary in 2017, Public Art Fund presents Good Fences Make Good Neighbors, a timely new exhibition across multiple boroughs by world-renowned artist Ai Weiwei. Inspired by the international migration crisis and tense sociopolitical battles surrounding the issue in the United States and worldwide, the artist has conceived of this ambitious, multi-site project as a way of transforming the metal wire security fence into a powerful artistic symbol. By installing fences in varying, site-specific forms at locations across the city […], Ai will create striking installations that draw attention to the role of the fence as both a physical manifestation and metaphorical expression of division. In this way, he will explore one of society’s most urgent issues, namely the psychic and physical barriers that divide us, which is at the heart of debates about immigration and refugees today...

Ai Weiwei, Liu Xiaodong at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

6 October 2017 to 7 January 2018

Included in group exhibition Art and China after 1989: Theater of the World at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NYC, NY.

Art and China after 1989: Theater of the World is a major exhibition of contemporary art from China spanning 1989 to 2008, arguably the most transformative period of modern Chinese and recent world history. The largest show of this subject ever mounted in North America, it offers an interpretative survey of Chinese experimental art framed by the geopolitical dynamics attending the end of the Cold War, the spread of globalization, and the rise of China...

Ai Weiwei at the Park Avenue Armory

7 June to 6 August 2017

Installation with Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron Hansel & Gretel at Wade Thompson Drill Hall, Park Avenue Armory, NYC, NY.

In a new commission that is both object and environment, Pritzker Prize-winning architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron with artist/activist Ai Weiwei explore the meaning of public space in our surveillance-laden world, referencing the story of Hansel and Gretel in which the children lose their way and feel a sense of menace in a space they know and trust. The artists take advantage of the vast openness of the Drill Hall, creating a 21st century public place in which the environment is disconcerting, the entrance is unexpected, and every movement is tracked and surveyed by drones and communicated to an unknown public...

Ai Weiwei at The Israel Museum

2 June to 28 October 2017

Solo exhibition Ai Weiwei: Maybe, Maybe Not at The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Israel.

“Ai’s profoundly metaphorical body of work links contemporary Chinese culture with its past in ways that take on even deeper meaning in the setting of Israel, with its similarly ancient heritage. By shifting contexts—from China to Jerusalem—these installations reflect commonalities between these two civilizations, whose cultures developed concurrently over several thousand years on the eastern and western edges of Asia,” said James S. Snyder, Anne and Jerome Fisher Director of the Israel Museum. “Our collections, covering a million and a half years of human creativity from around the globe, also offer a resonant setting for the universality of Ai’s work, centered on interconnections among history, place, and human experience.”...

Ai Weiwei in The Brooklyn Rail

December 2016/January 2017

Interview with Phong Bui Art in Conversation: Ai Weiwei with Phong Bui for The Brooklyn Rail.

In tracing Weiwei’s complex and prolific career since mid-1995, we all felt his work embodied breadth and ambition, which compelled questions regarding social and political issues including the legacy of the long rule of China’s communist party. The undeniable scale and world-wide visibility of his work has sparked expressions of freedom and safeguarded individual expression to such degree that, whatever the differences in ideology between capitalism and communism are, China is straddling to maintain this precarious balance between old traditional values and the new consumer culture...

AI WEIWEI in The Wall Street Journal

2 November 2016

Ai Weiwei named as The Wall Street Journal Magazine's Art "Innovator of the Year".

Ai Weiwei does not have a signature style, but instead works across mediums, and has become one of the world's most influential and prolific contemporary artists...

AI WEIWEI in The Wall Street Journal

2 November 2016

Ai Weiwei’s Triumphant Return by Tony Perrottet in The Wall Street Journal Magazine.

In 2011, the controversial artist Ai Weiwei was detained in Beijing and his passport was confiscated for four years by the Chinese government. This fall marks his return to New York City with two new gallery shows...

AI WEIWEI in The New York Times

20 October 2016

Article by Robin Pogrebin Ai Weiwei Melds Art and Activism in Shows About Displacement in The New York Times.

When migrants were forced to evacuate the Idomeni refugee camp along the Greek-Macedonian border, the Chinese artist and dissident Ai Weiwei came to gather what they left behind.

Mr. Ai did not haul back to his Berlin studio only the filthy clothes, shoes and blankets that would otherwise have been bulldozed away. He washed them. He ironed creases into the pants, brushed lint off the sweaters, scraped mud out of the sneaker treads...

Ai Weiwei at Palazzo Strozzi

23 September 2016 to 22 January 2017

Solo exhibition Ai Weiwei. Libero at Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, Italy.

Running till 22 January 2017, Palazzo Strozzi in Florence presents Italy’s first major retrospective dedicated to one of the world’s most celebrated and influential contemporary artists, Ai Weiwei. This outstanding retrospective showcasing both old and new works has received broad coverage and rave reviews in all the leading Italian and international media.

This major exhibition includes key monumental installations, sculptures and objects, as well as videos and photography series produced throughout his career. These range from his years living in New York 1980s and ’90s when he discovered his ‘masters’ Andy Warhol and Marcel Duchamp, to the large iconic assemblages works from the early 2000s consisting of objects such as bicycles and stools, to his recent controversial and engaged works such as portraits of political dissidents built with LEGO bricks, and his projects on migration in the Mediterranean region...

Ai Weiwei in The New York Times

18 August 2016

Interview with Masha Goncharova for The New York Times online, On Instagram, the Artist Ai Weiwei Focuses on Refugees.

Ai Weiwei, the Chinese artist and dissident, is known for his films, sculptures and photography. Last July, the Chinese government returned Mr. Ai his passport after four years of detainment in Beijing. Since sharing the moment on his Instagram, Mr. Ai has been traveling — first moving to Germany, where he settled with his family, then to London in September for his single-artist show at the Royal Academy of Arts, and in January to Paris for an atrium and window display inside the Bon Marché department store.

Featured most prominently on Mr. Ai’s Instagram after his release from China were not the shows, but rather his extensive travels to the Greek island of Lesbos, which he has visited frequently since late December. Each time he went, Mr. Ai posted many (a handful a day was not uncommon) poignant photos of refugees...

Ai Weiwei at 21er Haus

14 July to 20 November 2016

Solo exhibition Ai Weiwei: translocation - transformation at 21er Haus, Vienna, Austria.

"Everything is art. Everything is politics", says Ai Weiwei (born in 1957), one of the world’s most famous contemporary artists. As a conceptual artist, documentarian and activist, his works deal not only critically with the history, culture and politics of his homeland China, they also react to social realities of migration between countries and continents. Through November 20, 2016, the 21er Haus presents his first major solo exhibition in Austria...

Ai Weiwei at The Warhol Museum

4 June to 11 September 2016

Two-person exhibition Andy Warhol/Ai Weiwei at The Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Andy Warhol/Ai Weiwei, developed by The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, PA, and the National Gallery of Victoria, with the participation of Ai Weiwei, explores the significant influence of these two artists on modern and contemporary life, focusing on the parallels, intersections, and points of difference between their practices—Warhol representing 20th-century modernity and the “American century,” and Ai representing life in the 21st century and what has been called the “Chinese century” to come...

Ai Weiwei at Hall Art Foundation

14 May to 27 November 2016

Included in group exhibition Landscapes After Ruskin: Redefining the Sublime at Hall Art Foundation, Reading, Vermont.

The Hall Art Foundation is pleased to announce a group exhibition curated by American artist Joel Sternfeld to be held in its galleries in Reading, Vermont from 14 May – 27 November 2016. Over fifty artists are represented in Landscapes after Ruskin: Redefining the Sublime, which includes paintings, photographs and sculptures selected by Sternfeld from the Hall Collection. The exhibition will also feature the world debut of Sternfeld’s video work, London Bridge (2016)...

Ai Weiwei at Museum of Fine Arts

3 April to 17 July 2016

Included in group exhibition Megacities Asia at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts.

The accelerated rise of megacities—those with populations of more than ten million—over the last 50 years has profoundly affected the lives of their inhabitants. Asia is home to more megacities than any other continent: the works by the 11 artists in this exhibition respond to the political, environmental, and social conditions of their home cities of Beijing, Shanghai, Delhi, Mumbai, and Seoul, conveying their textures, proportions, and striking material and visual juxtapositions...

Ai Weiwei at Royal Academy of Arts

19 September to 13 December 2015

Solo exhibition Ai Weiwei at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, England.

Ai became widely known in Britain after his sunflower seeds installation in Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall in 2010 but this is the first major institutional survey of his work ever held in the UK and it bridges over two decades of his extraordinary career. Curated in collaboration with Ai Weiwei from his studio in Beijing, we present some of his most important works from the time he returned to China from the US in 1993 right up to present day. Among new works created specifically for our galleries and courtyard are a number of large-scale installations, as well as works showcasing everything from marble and steel to tea and glass. With typical boldness, the chosen works explore a multitude of challenging themes, drawing on his own experience to comment on creative freedom, censorship and human rights, as well as examining contemporary Chinese art and society...