So Sorry

by Weiwei Ai, Mark Siemons

Born in 1957, Beijing-based Ai Weiwei is perhaps the most internationally visible contemporary Chinese artist. Philip Tinari has described his practice as a, "multitasking sprawl--encompassing artmaking, curating, publishing and architectural design-- that] threatens to answer the vaguely unsettling question, What would Andy Warhol's career have looked like if it had played out in turn-of-the-millennium China? (For one thing, architecture might have stood in for film; where Warhol created an alter-Hollywood, Ai is a self-invented starchitect)." After spending the early 1980s in New York, Ai moved back to Beijing in 1994. Already an important member of the Stars group, a socially critical movement that borrowed heavily from western art and culture, he established the famed China Art Archives and Warehouse in 1997. In 2000, on the occasion of the Shanghai Biennale, he organized the attention-grabbing group exhibition "Fuck Off" in collaboration with curator Feng Boyi. More recently, he was involved in the design of the Olympic Stadium in Beijing by Herzog & de Meuron. This publication takes an in-depth look at Ai's under-explored engagement with ceramics, and is published on the occasion of a solo exhibition of his recent ceramic work at Holland's Groningen Museum.

Genres: Art

120 pages, Hardcover

First published December 1, 2009

About the author

Ai Weiwei is one of the world's most important living artists. Born in 1957, He lives in Cambridge.

Reviews

[Yu · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Humans are destined to be narrow-minded empiricists, animals who have renounced a natural state, from among every possible path, humans have chosen the longest, and most remote path leading to the self." -- "The Longest Road" from So Sorry

Ai Wei Wei is an intellectual, precious for Chinese society nowadays. Many artistic works he does should be more exposed to the Chinese audiences. It is not only connects to the democracy, human rights, and other cliches that people may think as values that Americans and Capitalists imposed on us, it also connects to the most profoundest philosophical questions. And that shows what went wrong to Chinese society and Chinese mentality. The basic understanding of genuine knowledge has been erased, removed, harshly blocked from the common people. An incredible materialized way of life has been created understand the big deceiving lie called "globalization".

So many eras we have jumped over. There is no parallel to Western world that much, but money, capital and markets are what China could keep up with. Sadly but true, one could read the rage between the lines.

[Mirjam]

I love Weiwei's art, but there's really only one appropriate way to review this book: 🖕

[Elaine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Irreverent, iconoclastic beyond imagination. Dropping a 2000-year-old Han Dynasty vase...Coca Cola signs on neolithic pottery...Ming vases with the minutely detailed 100@ accurate blue-and-white designs only on the inside...

[Mills College Library]

709.2 A2882r 2009