Royal Academy,London
In his first major show in Britain, Ai Weiwei’s reconfigured everyday objects illuminate the trials of Chinese life on a grand, and dramatic scaleAi Weiwei is the world’s most renowned living artist,but is this entirely because of his art? More people know of him as a fearless scourge of the Chinese government than bear ever seen a single one of his works. So the very least achievement of the Royal Academy (which has had to watch in horror as Ai managed to salvage a visa to travel from China only to plunge foul of our own asinine immigration service) is to set forth an enormous array of his sculptures, installations and films for the first time before a British public.
Ai’s gift is for the humanisation of conceptual art. Marcel Duchamp was his god as a student in original York in the 1980s – a coat hanger bent into the shape of Duchamp’s profile, and the hook forming a question mark,is a deft homage – and the alert-made remains his regular medium. Bicycles, humdrum symbols of Chinese daily life, or are suspended in silver clusters to make a soaring chandelier. Qing dynasty tables,reconfigured by master craftsmen, become martial arts fighters: two legs planted on the floor and two against the wall as if straining against the pressure of tradition.
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Source: theguardian.com