Ai Weiwei: Roots
2 October – 2 November 2019
www.lissongallery.com/exhibitions/ai-weiwei-roots
Ai Weiwei
A important exhibition by Ai Weiwei this autumn functions a new collection of monumental sculptural works in iron, solid from big tree roots sourced in Brazil for the duration of study and output for previous year’s survey exhibition, ‘Raiz’, at the Oscar Niemeyer-designed OCA Pavilion in Ibirapuera Park, São Paulo.
Ai worked with nearby artisans and communities throughout Brazil, going to Trancoso in the east to locate roots and trunks from the endangered Pequi Vinagreiro tree, normally identified in the Bahian rainforest. Elements of these rare tree roots, some of which could be about a thousand yrs outdated, had been painstakingly moulded, conjoined and then cast to develop putting compositions and daring types that replicate their Brazilian heritage. Although some resemble wonderful jungle beasts or fantastical creatures, these as the 3- and four-legged will work Fly and Degree, many others including Bash and Martin (all 2019) consist of shattered, exploded root varieties radiating outwards from a central nexus. The titles all came as strategies from Ai Weiwei’s young son Ai Lao, based on his individual observations or connections built when browsing these tree stays with his father, adding to the feeling of surreal displacement and alien disjointedness in the exhibition. This incongruous ambiance speaks additional of the works’ depiction of the state of ‘uprootedness’, a single that mirrors not only the artist’s peripatetic existence following currently being permitted to go away China in 2015, but also the plight of the refugees he has spent the previous several a long time documenting, as well as the many indigenous populations that rely on the trees and forests of Brazil for their habitats and sustenance. The deforestation and concomitant purge of peoples and means relates to previous bodies of operate produced by Ai and to the latest political realities of a lot of international locations, like his native China.
The materials employed in building the Roots sequence – cast iron covered in a patina of orange rust – likewise responds to historical cultures and man’s initial applications for tree felling and woodworking, alternatively than to the current, extra well mannered artwork heritage of bronze or metal sculpture. Though originally contorted by their bordering landscapes, these roots were not born of character but built and crafted by human fingers, employing the ancient tactics of ‘lost wax’ moulding and then iron casting. These solutions characterize a traditional, largely bygone way of existence that has been usurped and upended by industrialisation and relentless modernisation, illustrating how progress can typically occur at the expenditure of cultural and societal nicely-staying.
Contrasting with these major, land-bound creatures is a amount of floating figures, clouds and dream-like vignettes. Ai has been developing delicate sculptures from stretched silk around bamboo armatures for the previous five several years, using a team of Chinese kite makers dependent in Weifang, a town in Shandong province. Purported to have been invented in China all-around 500 BC by a carpenter and a thinker, the kite has held quite a few features all over record from measuring distances or wind velocity, to conversation and army usage. Ai’s kites refer back again to a mythological encyclopaedia of monsters and creatures known as Shan Hai Jing (the Vintage of Mountains and Seas) that also pre-dated Christianity, which depicts fantastical hybrids of chimera, gorgons, unicorns, dragons and griffins. Alongside this bestiary, Ai has extra private and childhood symbols, as properly as references back to his have functions – Surveillance Camera and his a single-fingered salutes, the Research of Standpoint series – and those people of his influences, which includes Marcel Duchamp and Vladimir Tatlin.
Eventually, the present ends with a enhancement of Ai’s experimentation with LEGO bricks. These new wall-primarily based is effective aspect politically-charged, pixelated renderings of the trajectory of a refugee boat refused docking at Lampedusa following two months at sea, the front website page of the Mueller report into Russian interference in the 2016 US Presidential election, as perfectly as a deconstructed symbol of the contentious protests of Tiananmen Sq. in 1989.
A new ebook, also entitled Roots – that includes contributions from nature writer Robert Macfarlane the curator of ‘Raiz’, Marcello Dantas the Chair of Asian Art at the Museum of Fantastic Arts Boston, Christina Yu Yu Brazilian anthropologist Lilia Moritz Schwarcz among the other individuals – will be published by Distanz on the situation of this exhibition, which is offered in collaboration with Ai’s Berlin gallery, neugerriemschneider.
Posted by hateruma_yaeyama on 2019-10-02 10:41:28
Tagged: , Ai Weiwei , Lisson Gallery
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