Gardiner Museum brings Ai Weiwei’s provocative questions into sharp relief with new exhibition GlobeArts
A preview of a new exhibition by Chinese artist Ai Weiwei at the Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Arts, in Toronto, on Feb 26, 2019.At the Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art in Toronto, a perilous pillar of six large blue-and-white vases towers over an exhibition by Chinese art star and activist Ai Weiwei. The decorative vases look like traditional Chinese porcelain but a closer examination reveals images of soldiers with guns and fleeing refugees wrapped around the sides.
His investigation of how China values its past, and of the impact of the rapid economic liberalization that began in the 1990s, continued with works such as, a piece from 2007 in which he painted the ubiquitous soft-drink logo on to a Neolithic vase. This show also includes a work from 2015 in which he painted a quartet of larger Han urns with the automotive paints used for luxury cars.
Mind you, Ai is not carving the marble himself, nor throwing, glazing and firing pots. His work in ceramics began when he first approached studios in Jingdezhen, a city in southern China known as a centre for porcelain production, and asked them to replicate Qing dynasty china as his own art: the show includes a pair of baluster vases in blue and white from 1996.
It’s the largest object in the room at the Gardiner; among the smallest are two pairs of handcuffs, one made of rosewood, the traditional material for Chinese furniture, and the other of jade. When Chinese authorities imprisoned Ai for three months in 2011, he was handcuffed for a daily interrogation.
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