AI WEIWEI - A SPACE BETWEEN CONSTRUCTION AND DESTRUCTION.
'Making Sence' - The Design Museum - LONDON. Photographed by Zhonghua Sui.
‘BUBBLE’ 2008 - With this sculpture Ai Weiwei wanted to test the limits of porcelain craftmanship, as this is the largest sphere it is possible to make in porcelain without cracking it in a kiln. Image: Zhonghua Sui for M-A (A SPACE BETWEEN) 2023.
Pushing through the gallery doors into a vast single room of organisation - like a depot of objects awaiting dispatch. The sense of temporary stillness is exhilarating - part factory, auction room, and part private storage facility - the brutal industrial lighting heightens the sense of a response on pause - pending reaction of a conveyor belt system from the world's factory - eerily without the uniformed army of workers - replaced with a curious public looking for answers but leaving with questions.
‘LEFT RIGHT STUDIO MATERIAL’, 2018. These fragments are the remains of Ai’s porcelain sculptures that were destroyed when his ‘Left Right’ studio in Bejing was demolished by the Chinese state in 2018. Image: Zhonghua Sui for M-A (A SPACE BETWEEN) 2023.
A pamphlet in hand used as reference - walls free from text - with neat numbers deciphering each artifact - as if this is not, in fact, an exhibition - more an inventory. And the institutional tension of the presentation is fascinating... allowing an enormity of distance between the work and the context of their creation - which makes the evidence on show seem more shocking - what is not said speaks louder than what is - the implication - the implicit reads pure to eyes lazy with normalised distractions... Ai Weiwei is not interested in decoration - there is nowhere to hide here, and the exploration of works that exposes found items - which have been repurposed and represented is extraordinary - the remains of an archeological treasure trove all amassed from locations - in plain sight.
‘UNTITLED (PORCELAIN BALLS)’, 2022 - Cannon balls made during the Song dynasty (960-1279 CE) from Xing ware. Image: Zhonghua Sui for M-A (A SPACE BETWEEN) 2023.
On entering the space the viewer looks down upon the regimented right-angled arrangements of 5 installations - a visual sensation not unlike touching down or lifting off in an areoplane - gazing down at a view of the world only felt from a certain distance.
‘SPOUTS’ 2015 - 250,000 porcelain spouts from teapots and wine ewers - crafted by hand from the Song dynasty (960-1279 CE). Image: Zhonghua Sui for M-A (A SPACE BETWEEN) 2023.
‘UNTITLED (LEGO INCIDENT)’, 2024. ‘Lego is a good metaphor for the speed and repetitiveness of much recent construction in China’. Image: Zhonghua Sui for M-A (A SPACE BETWEEN) 2023.
'Fields' of elements or 'scattered fragments' are massed and organised with a precision that immediately communicates the human hand and yet are presented alone creating an overwhelming sense of the micro versus macro - the tip of the melting iceberg. Nothing green grows in these no man’s lands - instead a feast for the grey matter - a harvest of pensive retrospection atmospherically sustains conceptual appetites.
‘STILL LIFE’ - 1993-2000 - Late stone age tools - including axe heads, chisels, knives and spinning wheels. Image: Zhonghua Sui for M-A (A SPACE BETWEEN) 2023.
Ai Weiwei - image: Rick Pushinsky 2022.
Ai Weiwei - ‘Making Sence’ - The Design Museum - Until 30 July 2023.
Thank you: Jordenne Murray