This blog post was updated on October 4, 2018.
Just announced are the details of an upcoming exhibition by firebrand artist, Ai Weiwei, at London’s renowned Lisson Gallery.
The show will be the Chinese conceptual artist’s third solo exhibition with Lisson Gallery, and for the show he has created a “monumental new installation of bicycles” as part of an ongoing series Forever alongside a number of hand-carved, domestic-scale copies of some highly personal objects such as a marble recreation of his father’s armchair; two sets of humble cosmetics bottles fashioned from jade; various handmade facsimiles of coat-hangers and pairs of handcuffs; and the window handles taken from Beijing taxis made in clear glass.
The bicycle installation is “configured in different modular shapes and layers of geometrically stacked structures” and serves as a reference to the famous Forever brand of bicycles that have been mass-manufactured in Shanghai since 1940. Once seen in great numbers throughout China, demand for these bikes has fallen drastically as cars take their place on urban streets. Ai’s Taxi Window Crank pieces provide “examples of a surreal political system that insists on removing such mundane items from public life for fear that protesters would transmit their leaflets through car windows during sensitive times.” Another piece in the show, a “ghostly, carved-marble gas mask,” relates to the problem of pollution in Beijing.
The Ai Weiwei exhibition opens to the public on the 23rd of May and runs until the 12th of July at the Lisson Gallery location at 27 Bell Street, NW1 5DA. The nearest London Underground station is located at Edgware Road.
Running concurrently with the Ai Weiwei show will be an exhibition by British artist Richard Long at Lisson’s other gallery space just down the street at 52 Bell Street. It will be Long’s first show with Lisson in three decades and will feature “a new work made directly in the gallery, as well as other recent pieces made on walks in England, Switzerland and Antarctica.”
For more information about both shows go to lissongallery.com.
Photo courtesy of the gallery
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