Ai Weiwei

Robert Miller Gallery will open its fall season with an exhibition of work by Ai Weiwei, a conceptual artist, curator, architect, and most importantly, the inspirational father figure of the new Chinese art movement. This show, the first exhibition of the artist’s work in New York since 1988, will consist of paintings, photographs, two major installations, and a group of sculptures.

Ai Weiwei often employs his country’s cultural artifacts, composing pieces out of both contemporary fungible products as well as precious relics, representing them by destroying and manipulating their parts. This emphasis is seen in the large-scale installation “Forever” Bicycles, a cylindrical arrangement of 42 bicycles stacked upon one another and measuring 177 inches in diameter. Writer Jean-Pierre Van der Meiren explains, “The bicycles are a perfect social icon of a China of the past. In Beijing the car is displacing the bicycle at lightning speed. In only a few years the city will choke in a single prolonged bout of congestion. So the tower of bicycles is not only a new Tower of Babel but shows above all the mad carrousel on which the new China finds itself.”

Ai Weiwei, 47, was born in Beijing, China, in 1957, son of one of China’s most popular contemporary poets, Ai Quing. In 1958, as a result of the Cultural Revolution’s anti-intellectual campaign, the artist’s entire family was exiled to Northwest China. Ai Weiwei grew up with hardship but at the zenith of China’s intellectual milieu. In 1978, his family was allowed to return to Beijing. From 1978 to 1981 the artist studied at the Beijing Film Institute. Along with other radical young artists, he formed the Stars Group in 1979 which rejected state sanctioned propaganda art. Ai Weiwei left China for New York City in 1981 where he attended the Parsons School of Design and the Art Students League. During the twelve years he lived on New York’s Lower East Side he developed an affinity for Duchamp and Warhol as well as Dada, Fluxus and Conceptual artists. He returned to Beijing in 1993 and there began a series of projects that would prove critical to the development of experimental art in China. Along with other artists from various parts of the country, he settled in a northeast suburb of the city that became known as the “East Village”. He published a series of journals showcasing the work of new Chinese artists. At the same time, he co-founded the China Art and Archives Warehouse, an art center promoting China’s experimental and alternative art. In sharp contrast to the complacent works displayed at the 2000 Shanghai Biennale, he co-curated the con-current seminal exhibition Fuck Off at Eastlink Gallery. Around the same time, Ai Weiwei was chosen to be the artistic consultant for architects Herzog and de Meuron’s Olympic stadium project in China.

This year, Ai Weiwei has had one-person museum exhibitions at Caermersklooster in Gent, Belgium, and at the Kunsthalle Bern in Switzerland. In addition, he contributed to the exhibitions: Between Past and Future: New Photography and Video from China at the International Center of Photography and the Asia Society in New York and regeneration: Contemporary Chinese Art from China and the US at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. A recent monograph titled Ai Weiwei Works: Beijing 1993-2003 was published in 2003 by Timezone 8 Ltd.

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Ai Weiwei