Humlebaek, Denmark
Lousiana Museum of Modern Art
It is difficult to curate an Ai Weiwei exhibition these days. The 54-year old Chinese artist/activist has been unable to travel since his 2011 imprisonment and, consequently, unable to work on his shows. Ai is best known for site-specific works, including the 100 million porcelain sunflower seeds he installed in Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall and the 1,001 Chinese men and women he flew to Kassel for Documenta. At the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art—the site of his first Scandinavian solo show—none of the planned new projects could be realized. Instead, the exhibition featured a handful of older works. It may sound like a small presentation, but some of the sculptures were monumental. For example, Forever (2003) is a Duchamp-inspired readymade of 42 bikes welded together in a circle. If any of them were to be removed, the whole structure would collapse, a reference to China as a mass society, with a system that limits individual freedom. …see the entire review in the print version of May’s Sculpture magazine.
