Tag Archives: ai weiwei

OSCAR BUZZ — AI WEIWEI: NEVER SORRY

Ai Weiwei lets the camera follow him everywhere in revealing documentary about art and activism

AI WEIWEI: NEVER SORRY (Alison Klayman, 2011)
Maysles Cinema
343 Malcolm X Blvd. between 127th & 128th Sts.
January 21-22, $10, 7:30
212-582-6050
www.mayslesinstitute.org
aiweiweineversorry.com

“I consider myself more of a chess player,” Ai Weiwei says at the beginning of Never Sorry, Alison Klayman’s revealing documentary about the larger-than-life Chinese artist and dissident. “My opponent makes a move, I make a move. Now I’m waiting for my opponent to make the next move.” Over the last several years, Ai has become perhaps the most famous and controversial artist in the world, primarily since he participated in the design of Beijing National Stadium, known as the Bird’s Nest, for the 2008 Summer Olympics, then denounced the Games on political grounds. Ai gives director, producer, and cinematographer Klayman, making her first full-length film, remarkable access to his personal and professional life as he gets physically abused by Chinese police, prepares to open major exhibits in Munich and London, and visits with his young son, Ai Lao, the result of a tryst with Wang Fen, an editor on his underground films. Klayman speaks with Ai Weiwei’s devoted wife, Lu Qing, an artist who publicly fought for his freedom when he disappeared in 2011; his mother, Gao Ying, who spent time in a labor camp with her dissident-poet husband, the late Ai Quing; and such fellow Chinese artists and critics as Chen Danqing, Feng Boyi, Hsieh Tehching, and Gu Changwei, who speak admiringly of Ai’s dedication to his art and his fearless search for the truth. A round man with a long, graying bear, Ai is a fascinating, complicated character, a gentle bull who openly criticizes his country because he loves it so much. He is a social media giant, making documentaries that are available for free on the internet and revolutionizing the way Twitter and the blogosphere are used. Ai risks his own freedom by demanding freedom for all, calling for government transparency before and after he is secretly arrested, not afraid of the potential repercussions. And he is also a proud cat lover — more than forty felines regularly roam around his studio — eagerly showing off one talented kitty that has a unique way of opening a door. Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry shows Ai to be an honorable, supremely principled human being who has deep respect for the history of China and a fierce determination to improve its future, no matter the personal cost. Although it was not nominated for an Academy Award — it made the short list — Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry will be screening at the Maysles Cinema on January 21 and 22 as part of the institute’s “Oscar Buzz” series, with Klayman participating in a Q&A following Monday’s night screening.

THE CONTENDERS 2012 — AI WEIWEI: NEVER SORRY

Ai Weiwei lets the camera follow him everywhere in revealing documentary about art and activism

AI WEIWEI: NEVER SORRY (Alison Klayman, 2011)
MoMA Film, Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Wednesday, December 12, 7:00
Series continues through January 12
Tickets: $12, in person only, may be applied to museum admission within thirty days, same-day screenings free with museum admission, available at Film and Media Desk beginning at 9:30 am
212-708-9400
www.moma.org
aiweiweineversorry.com

“I consider myself more of a chess player,” Ai Weiwei says at the beginning of Never Sorry, Alison Klayman’s revealing documentary about the larger-than-life Chinese artist and dissident. “My opponent makes a move, I make a move. Now I’m waiting for my opponent to make the next move.” Over the last several years, Ai has become perhaps the most famous and controversial artist in the world, primarily since he participated in the design of Beijing National Stadium, known as the Bird’s Nest, for the 2008 Summer Olympics, then denounced the Games on political grounds. Ai gives director, producer, and cinematographer Klayman, making her first full-length film, remarkable access to his personal and professional life as he gets physically abused by Chinese police, prepares to open major exhibits in Munich and London, and visits with his young son, Ai Lao, the result of a tryst with Wang Fen, an editor on his underground films. Klayman speaks with Ai Weiwei’s devoted wife, Lu Qing, an artist who publicly fought for his freedom when he disappeared in 2011; his mother, Gao Ying, who spent time in a labor camp with her dissident-poet husband, the late Ai Quing; and such fellow Chinese artists and critics as Chen Danqing, Feng Boyi, Hsieh Tehching, and Gu Changwei, who speak admiringly of Ai’s dedication to his art and his fearless search for the truth. A round man with a long, graying bear, Ai is a fascinating, complicated character, a gentle bull who openly criticizes his country because he loves it so much. He is a social media giant, making documentaries that are available for free on the internet and revolutionizing the way Twitter and the blogosphere are used. Ai risks his own freedom by demanding freedom for all, calling for government transparency before and after he is secretly arrested, not afraid of the potential repercussions. And he is also a proud cat lover — more than forty felines regularly roam around his studio — eagerly showing off one talented kitty that has a unique way of opening a door. Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry shows Ai to be an honorable, supremely principled human being who has deep respect for the history of China and a fierce determination to improve its future, no matter the personal cost. Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry is being shown on December 12 at 7:00 as part of MoMA’s annual series “The Contenders,” consisting of exemplary films they believe will stand the test of time, with Klayman on hand to participate in a postscreening discussion; upcoming entries include Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln, Charles Atlas’s Ocean, and Tim Burton’s Frankenweenie. (To find out more about Ai Weiwei’s art, specifically his recent projects in New York City, please follow these links: “Sunflower Seeds,” “Circle of Animals: Zodiac Heads,” “Ai Weiwei: New York Photographs 1983-1993,” and “1001 Chairs for Ai Weiwei.”

DOC NYC — AI WEIWEI: NEVER SORRY

Ai Weiwei lets the camera follow him everywhere in revealing documentary about art and activism

NEW YORK’S DOCUMENTARY FESTIVAL — AI WEIWEI: NEVER SORRY (Alison Klayman, 2011)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
Tuesday, November 13, $16.50, 9:15
212-924-7771
www.docnyc.net
aiweiweineversorry.com

“I consider myself more of a chess player,” Ai Weiwei says at the beginning of Never Sorry, Alison Klayman’s revealing documentary about the larger-than-life Chinese artist and dissident. “My opponent makes a move, I make a move. Now I’m waiting for my opponent to make the next move.” Over the last several years, Ai has become perhaps the most famous and controversial artist in the world, primarily since he participated in the design of Beijing National Stadium, known as the Bird’s Nest, for the 2008 Summer Olympics, then denounced the Games on political grounds. Ai gives director, producer, and cinematographer Klayman, making her first full-length film, remarkable access to his personal and professional life as he gets physically abused by Chinese police, prepares to open major exhibits in Munich and London, and visits with his young son, Ai Lao, the result of a tryst with Wang Fen, an editor on his underground films. Klayman speaks with Ai Weiwei’s devoted wife, Lu Qing, an artist who publicly fought for his freedom when he disappeared in 2011; his mother, Gao Ying, who spent time in a labor camp with her dissident-poet husband, the late Ai Quing; and such fellow Chinese artists and critics as Chen Danqing, Feng Boyi, Hsieh Tehching, and Gu Changwei, who speak admiringly of Ai’s dedication to his art and his fearless search for the truth. A round man with a long, graying bear, Ai is a fascinating, complicated character, a gentle bull who openly criticizes his country because he loves it so much. He is a social media giant, making documentaries that are available for free on the internet and revolutionizing the way Twitter and the blogosphere are used. Ai risks his own freedom by demanding freedom for all, calling for government transparency before and after he is secretly arrested, not afraid of the potential repercussions. And he is also a proud cat lover — more than forty felines regularly roam around his studio — eagerly showing off one talented kitty that has a unique way of opening a door. Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry shows Ai to be an honorable, supremely principled human being who has deep respect for the history of China and a fierce determination to improve its future, no matter the personal cost. The film completed its extended run at the IFC Center on November 8, but it will have an encore screening there on November 13, with Klayman on hand, as part of the DOC NYC festival, a week of nonfiction screenings that also includes such works as Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi’s 5 Broken Cameras, with Michael Moore in attendance; Rob Fruchtman and Lisa Fruchtman’s Sweet Dreams, with the directors and special guests participating in a discussion; and Mary Kerr’s Radioman, with the iconic New York character there to talk about himself and the film.

(To find out more about Ai Weiwei’s art, specifically his recent projects in New York City, please follow these links: “Sunflower Seeds,” “Circle of Animals: Zodiac Heads,” “Ai Weiwei: New York Photographs 1983-1993,” and “1001 Chairs for Ai Weiwei.”

AI WEIWEI: NEVER SORRY

Ai Weiwei lets the camera follow him everywhere in revealing documentary about art and activism

AI WEIWEI: NEVER SORRY (Alison Klayman, 2011)
IFC Center, 323 Sixth Ave. at Third St., 212-924-7771
Lincoln Plaza Cinema, 1886 Broadway at 63rd St., 212-757-2280
Opens Friday, July 27
aiweiweineversorry.com

“I consider myself more of a chess player,” Ai Weiwei says at the beginning of Never Sorry, Alison Klayman’s revealing documentary about the larger-than-life Chinese artist and dissident. “My opponent makes a move, I make a move. Now I’m waiting for my opponent to make the next move.” Over the last several years, Ai has become perhaps the most famous and controversial artist in the world, primarily since he participated in the design of Beijing National Stadium, known as the Bird’s Nest, for the 2008 Summer Olympics, then denounced the Games on political grounds. Ai gives director, producer, and cinematographer Klayman, making her first full-length film, remarkable access to his personal and professional life as he gets physically abused by Chinese police, prepares to open major exhibits in Munich and London, and visits with his young son, Ai Lao, the result of a tryst with Wang Fen, an editor on his underground films. Klayman speaks with Ai Weiwei’s devoted wife, Lu Qing, an artist who publicly fought for his freedom when he disappeared in 2011; his mother, Gao Ying, who spent time in a labor camp with her dissident-poet husband, the late Ai Quing; and such fellow Chinese artists and critics as Chen Danqing, Feng Boyi, Hsieh Tehching, and Gu Changwei, who speak admiringly of Ai’s dedication to his art and his fearless search for the truth. A round man with a long, graying bear, Ai is a fascinating, complicated character, a gentle bull who openly criticizes his country because he loves it so much. He is a social media giant, making documentaries that are available for free on the internet and revolutionizing the way Twitter and the blogosphere are used. Ai risks his own freedom by demanding freedom for all, calling for government transparency before and after he is secretly arrested, not afraid of the potential repercussions. And he is also a proud cat lover — more than forty felines regularly roam around his studio — eagerly showing off one talented kitty that has a unique way of opening a door. Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry shows Ai to be an honorable, supremely principled human being who has deep respect for the history of China and a fierce determination to improve its future, no matter the personal cost. Klayman will be on hand at the IFC Center for half a dozen screenings opening weekend, July 27-29, to talk about the film and her extraordinary subject. (To find out more about Ai Weiwei’s art, specifically his recent projects in New York City, please follow these links: “Sunflower Seeds,” “Circle of Animals: Zodiac Heads,” “Ai Weiwei: New York Photographs 1983-1993,” and “1001 Chairs for Ai Weiwei.”

AI WEIWEI: SUNFLOWER SEEDS

Ai Weiwei, “Sunflower Seeds,” detail, hand-painted porcelain (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Mary Boone Gallery
541 West 24th St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Tuesday – Saturday through February 4, free
212-752-2929
www.maryboonegallery.com
www.aiweiwei.com
sunflower seeds slideshow

In October 2010, Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei installed 100 million porcelain sunflower seeds in the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall. The individual husks were made by hand by 1,600 workers over a period of two and a half years in Jingdezhen, long famous for its porcelain production, dating back to the Song Dynasty (960-1279). Three million of the hand-painted seeds are now on view at Mary Boone in Chelsea, where they form a rather neat rectangular field in the middle of the spacious gallery. You can walk around the field and take pictures, but if you get too close, a security guard will warn you to back off. When the work opened at the Tate, visitors were encouraged to actually walk and lie on the seeds, stepping right on and crunching the seemingly endless black-and-white pieces, but that interaction created a dust that was determined to be a health hazard, so from then on visitors could only look and not touch. “Sunflower Seeds” is loaded with references, from the historical and political to the economic and the governmental; in fact, near the end of its run at the Tate, Ai was arrested and disappeared for nearly three months. Approaching the piece now, it is difficult not to imagine Ai himself lost in it, his disappearance, which led to outcry from human rights and arts organizations around the world, like a needle in the haystack of the Chinese people. The installation raises questions of mass production and exploitive labor, the Cultural Revolution (Mao badges often included yellow sunflowers), cheap “Made in China” global exports, world hunger, the lack of individuality in an overpopulated Communist Chinese society, and the value of art itself. (Last February, a 100-kilogram collection of the seeds sold for more than half a million dollars at Sotheby’s.) Even the dust-up at the Tate, though not intentional, calls to mind the numerous health hazards that have recently arisen in Chinese food products. Ai also honors his father, the poet Ai Qing, an enemy of the revolution who was banished to a province where the exiles ate many sunflower seeds. The installation at Mary Boone is a far cry from the Tate original, a commission for the museum’s Unilever Series. It feels too neat, and the security guard adds a tension to the viewing that was clearly not the artist’s initial intent. Still, if you just let yourself get lost in the piece, putting away the camera and just allowing your eyes to roll over its abundance, “Sunflower Seeds” is a compelling work that can be as deep as you want it to be.

AI WEIWEI: NEW YORK PHOTOGRAPHS 1983-1993

Ai Weiwei, “Mirror,” 1987, on view at the Asia Society through August 14

Asia Society
725 Park Ave. at 70th St.
Tuesday – Sunday through August 14, $10, 11:00 am – 6:00 pm
212-288-6400
www.asiasociety.org
www.aiweiwei.com

The Asia Society had already planned to mount the intimate exhibition “Ai Weiwei: New York Photographs 1983-1993” well before the controversial conceptual Chinese artist was arrested for so-called economic crimes by the Chinese government on April 3. But suddenly without access to the prints used for the show’s 2009 debut at the Three Shadows Photography Art Centre in Beijing, Three Shadows worked with Weiwei’s wife to sift through the ten thousand only-recently-discovered shots he had taken during his ten-year stay in New York City, which depict a critical period in his development. Fashioning himself as a kind of melding of Andy Warhol and Allen Ginsberg, Weiwei brought his camera everywhere, photographing riots and protests in Tompkins Square Park, Bill Clinton on the campaign trail in Harlem, Wigstock and other downtown concerts and events, and even Al Sharpton marching in support of Tawana Brawley. But like Warhol and Ginsberg, he primarily photographed his friends and fellow artists as they lounged around in bed, did their laundry, and lived an essentially bohemian existence in the East Village, based in his Third St. apartment. In fact, Weiwei became friends with Ginsberg, who is featured in several of the photos. The 227 inkjet on Fantac Innova Ultra Smooth Gloss works, arranged in two chronological, horizontal rows running across the gallery rooms and often containing elements direct from the contact sheet, lend insight into Weiwei as both artist and activist, a role that would come to define his very being and earn him international renown. Even after his release on June 22, under which he was ordered to be silent for a year, a Google+ page that just might be Weiwei’s own has been gaining prominence, increasing the artist’s visibility as he once again thumbs his nose at the Chinese government, if he is indeed behind it.

Born in 1957, Weiwei was between the formative years of twenty-five and thirty-five when he took the New York photos, which depict such fellow Chinese artists as composer Tan Dun (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, the opera Peony Pavilion), who will be conducting the Metropolis Ensemble in The Martial Arts Trilogy on August 12 at the free Lincoln Center Out of Doors festival; artist Xu Bing, who currently has a show at the Morgan Library; director Chen Kaige (Farewell My Concubine, Temptress Moon); performance artist Hsieh Tehching, who had a retrospective at MoMA last year; cinematographer Zhao Fei (Raise the Red Lantern, Sweet and Lowdown); painter Yao Qingzhang; and cinematographer-director Gu Changwei (Red Sorghum, Peacock), among many others. The photos’ in-the-moment compositions recall Ginsberg’s pictures of the Beat Generation, featuring Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady, William S. Burroughs, Gregory Corso, and the rest of the Beats. Again like Ginsberg, Weiwei captured a very specific instant in time, an important decade in which Chinese art began to take hold in America ten years after Nixon’s historic visit to China. “The New York I knew no longer exists,” Weiwei says about the exhibition. “Looking back on the past, I can see that these photographs are facts, but not necessarily true. . . . The present always surpasses the past, and the future will not care about today.” Weiwei’s photos, which are imbued with a joie de vivre, indeed evoke the past, the present, and the future, with the photographer always front and center.

AI WEIWEI: CIRCLE OF ANIMALS / ZODIAC HEADS

Ai Weiwei’s intricate “Zodiac Heads” are on view in the Pulitzer Fountain through July 15 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Pulitzer Fountain
Grand Army Plaza at Central Park
Fifth Ave. at West 58th St.
Through July 15, free
www.zodiacheads.com
online slideshow

On April 3, artist Ai Weiwei was arrested by the Chinese government, with little information about his whereabouts. An international Free Ai Weiwei campaign began, and on June 22 he was finally released on bail, having been charged with tax evasion, but that is far from the end of the story. “Despite the relief that Ai Weiwei is back with his family,” German foreign minister Guido Westerwelle said, “it remains a fact that his freedom is subject to oppressive restrictions.” As German politicians meet with Chinese officials to discuss human rights concerns, Ai Weiwei will remain in Beijing, where he has been ordered to stay for a period of one year. You can honor the onetime New Yorker, who lived here from 1981 to 1993, by visiting his first public installation in a major U.S. city, “Circle of Animals / Zodiac Heads,” which is on view in the Pulitzer Fountain in front of the Plaza through July 15. Based on a dozen sculptures designed by Giuseppe Castiglione as part of a water-clock fountain for the Garden of Perfect Brightness (Yanming Yuan) for the Qing dynasty in the mid-eighteenth century — and was looted and burned by British and French troops at the conclusion of the Second Opium War in 1860 — the large-scale work features twelve bronze animal heads, each relating to a sign of the zodiac. The intricately detailed heads range from the rat, the ox, and the tiger to the rabbit, the snake, and the horse, from the ram, the rooster, and the monkey to the dog, the boar, and the most fanciful, the dragon.

Ai Weiwei is not seeking to make any grand statements with the fun display, which incorporates history, war, memory, folklore, and astrology. “I think it’s something that everyone can have some understanding of, including children and people who are not in the art world. I think it’s important to show your work to the public. That’s what I really care about,” Ai Weiwei explains in the exhibition catalog, which includes a photo of each head and a description of that zodiac sign, along with an essay by Susan Delson and excerpts of interviews with the artist about the project. “Anybody can make a set of zodiac figures,” he continues. “We never change the subject, we always change the interpretation. . . . I am always concerned with how we make judgments. And in questioning others’ judgment, and also questioning my judgment. And always saying art is not the end but the beginning. Art is not the end. The product is never the end but should be the beginning. Otherwise art has no life.” Thus, just as with Ai Weiwei’s personal freedom, “Circle of Animals / Zodiac Heads” should not be seen as the end of the story.