Ai Weiwei
Neolithic Pottery with Coca-Cola Logo
2007
metallic paint, earthenware jar
Neolithic Pottery with Coca-Cola Logo
2007
metallic paint, earthenware jar
The Neolithic period runs from around 5,000BC to about 3,000BC. These urns were handmade, but on a large scale. Now it is an ancient cultural relic and is very valuable; however, in ancient China these urns were not precious. They were produced quite cheaply and in large quantities to be placed in tombs.
Urns of this vintage are usually cherished for their importance in human evolutionary history. By employing them as readymades, Ai strips them of their air of preciousness only to reapply it according to a different system of values. However, this is not the well-worn strategy of the readymade famously applied by Duchamp to his urinal Fountain, wherein the object lacked cultural weight until placed in an art context. Instead, Ai’s chosen readymades already have significance. Working in this manner, Ai transforms precious artifacts—treating them as base and valueless by painting, dropping, grinding, or slapping with a logo—into contemporary fine art. The substitution of one kind of value for another occurs when he displays the transformed urns in a museum case, reinstilling value but replacing historical significance with a newer cultural one. http://dailyserving.com/2010/07/ai-weiwei-dropping-the-urn/
Urns of this vintage are usually cherished for their importance in human evolutionary history. By employing them as readymades, Ai strips them of their air of preciousness only to reapply it according to a different system of values. However, this is not the well-worn strategy of the readymade famously applied by Duchamp to his urinal Fountain, wherein the object lacked cultural weight until placed in an art context. Instead, Ai’s chosen readymades already have significance. Working in this manner, Ai transforms precious artifacts—treating them as base and valueless by painting, dropping, grinding, or slapping with a logo—into contemporary fine art. The substitution of one kind of value for another occurs when he displays the transformed urns in a museum case, reinstilling value but replacing historical significance with a newer cultural one. http://dailyserving.com/2010/07/ai-weiwei-dropping-the-urn/
'The historical and cultural significance of the materials and techniques Ai Weiwei uses are an essential element of almost all his sculptures.' http://www.lissongallery.com/exhibitions/ai-weiwei
The installation consists of photographs of some of the bunches of flowers Ai Weiwei put in his bicycle basket every day during his travel ban. The ban ran for over 600 days. This artwork is made up of photographs and the bicycle, but the artwork also existed in cyberspace -as a daily posting on his website and social media feeds. Is the artwork the daily placing of flowers, or the documentation of the placing of flowers? The choice of materials is merely a way to represent and record the action.
Discuss art practices and working methods the artist used to make the artwork:
Ai Wei Wei
With Flowers-
Ai’s practice occurred under a passport restriction. Every day he placed a new bunch of flowers in a bicycle basket out the front of his studio, without fail for over 600 days. This installation artwork would not be complete without the surveillance of Chinese authorities of the bicycle that he had no control over but this was not his only audience at the time. To document this process he shared his daily routine on social media, one photo a day and people tuned in as a sort of internet interaction while he was under travel ban. To take this peaceful protest into a gallery format, his photographs were printed in high quality and made into a wallpaper for the gallery wall. In front of the wall was a 3d representation of the bike and flowers, although he may not have been physically part of this process, he was the brains behind the political and conceptual artwork.
Daiana
With Flowers-
Ai’s practice occurred under a passport restriction. Every day he placed a new bunch of flowers in a bicycle basket out the front of his studio, without fail for over 600 days. This installation artwork would not be complete without the surveillance of Chinese authorities of the bicycle that he had no control over but this was not his only audience at the time. To document this process he shared his daily routine on social media, one photo a day and people tuned in as a sort of internet interaction while he was under travel ban. To take this peaceful protest into a gallery format, his photographs were printed in high quality and made into a wallpaper for the gallery wall. In front of the wall was a 3d representation of the bike and flowers, although he may not have been physically part of this process, he was the brains behind the political and conceptual artwork.
Daiana