Ai Weiwei — Jeu de Paume, Concorde — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: February 21 → April 29, 2012

Ai Weiwei — L’art tornade Multi-récidiviste de la provocation contre le régime chinois, Ai Weiwei, a vu sa notoriété éclipser sa propre création. Alors que s'ouvre l'exposition consacrée à son oeuvre au Jeu de Paume, il apparaît urgent de comprendre en quoi sa démarche porte les germes de la répression dont il est victime.

“Ai Weiwei — Interlacing” is the first major exhibition of photographs and videos by Ai Weiwei. It foregrounds Ai Weiwei the communicator — the documenting, analyzing, interweaving artist who communicates via many channels. Ai Weiwei already used photography in his New York years, but especially since his return to Beijing, he has incessantly documented the everyday urban and social realities in China, discussing it over blogs and Twitter. Photographs of radical urban transformation, of the search for earthquake victims, and the destruction of his Shanghai studio are presented together with his art photography projects, the Documenta project Fairytale, the countless blog and cell phone photographs. A comprehensive book accompanies this exhibition.

Ai Weiwei is a generalist, a conceptual, socially critical artist dedicated to creating friction with, and forming reality. As an architect, conceptual artist, sculptor, photographer, blogger, Twitterer, interview artist, and cultural critic, he is a sensitive observer of current topics and social problems: a great communicator and networker who brings life into art and art into life.

Ai Weiwei deliberately confronts social conditions in China and in the world. Through photographically documenting the architectonic clear-cutting of Beijing in the name of progress, with provocative measurements of the world, his personal positionings in the Study of Perspective, with radical cuts in the past (made to found pieces of furniture) in order to create possibilities for the present and the future, and with his tens of thousands of blog entries, blog photographs, and cell phone photographs (along with many other artistic declarations). This first, large exhibition and book project of his photography and videos focuses on Ai Weiwei’s diversity, complexity, and connectedness, his “interlacing” and “networking” with hundreds of photographs, blogs, and explanatory essays.

Imprisoned on April 3rd 2011 by the Chinese authorities because of his political activities, released on bail June 22nd 2011, Ai Weiwei is still, today, banned from leaving the country.