All nice empires rise step by step: brick by brick, wall by wall, fort by fort, battle by battle, plunder by plunder.
And after they fall, they don’t simply disappear in a puff of smoke. They dissolve slowly and painfully: 12 months by 12 months, decade by decade, century by century, coup by coup, revolt by revolt.
“The End,” reads a big grayscale paintings on the entrance of Ai Weiwei’s exhibition What You See Is What You See at Faurschou New York. It reproduces the closing body of The Nice Dictator (1940), Charlie Chaplin’s movie parody of Adolf Hitler. With different items depicting the final American soldier to depart Afghanistan, the suspicious Nord Stream pipeline explosions of 2022, and a portrait of tyrannized WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, it turns into clear that we’re a scathing indictment of empire.
Ai Weiwei, “Last U.S. Soldier Leaving Afghanistan” (2022), toy bricks (LEGO), ~104 3/4 X 104 3/4 inches (266 x 266 cm)
I virtually forgot to say that the entire wall items within the present are fabricated from toy bricks (LEGO and its Chinese language equal WOMA). Tens of 1000’s of them laid piece by piece, line by line, pixel by pixel, hand by hand.
Elsewhere within the exhibition, Ai presents a lineup of acquainted Western artwork historic masterpieces, every with a catch. Emanuel Leutze’s George Washington wades his boat by means of climate-induced glaciers throughout the Delaware, whereas China looms because the world’s subsequent hegemon within the background. On the rightmost aspect of a colossal, 650,000-brick model of Claude Monet’s “Water Lilies,” a mysterious darkish void recollects the time spent by each the artist and his father in Chinese language gulags and prisons. A Warholian interpretation of Leonardo’s “The Last Supper” (1515–20) options Ai as Judas (“I want to tell people not to trust me,” he instructed Jane Ursula Harris in an interview revealed on the gallery’s web site). Giorgione’s 1510 “Sleeping Venus” slumbers subsequent to a coat hanger used for at-home abortions, and Frank Stella’s 1967 “Harran II” is reimagined with the colours of the Palestinian flag.
Foreground: Ai Weiwei’s Fight Vases (2023), porcelain, set of 90 helmets. Background: “Washington Crossing the Delaware” (2023), toy bricks (WOMA), ~105 1/2 x 267 3/4 inches (400 x 680 cm)
Ai Weiwei, “Sleeping Venus with Coat Hanger” (2022), toy bricks (LEGO), ~194 1/2 x 120 inches (494 × 304 cm)
It’s been a decade since Ai confirmed his first toy-brick paintings in an exhibtion on the notorious Alcatraz Jail outdoors San Francisco. You possibly can see why he retains returning to this medium. There’s a whiff of the dialectical in the way in which toy bricks symbolize childhood, innocence, and play, whereas additionally embodying readymade tradition, mass manufacturing, and unbridled consumerism. Ai additionally performs with our delusions of individualism and the shaky notion of authorship within the age of digital copy. He flips a center finger at each empire and the industrial artwork world. Usually, the 2 are arduous to inform aside.
Finally, this present is a tribute to anybody terrorized and brutalized immediately or not directly by the world’s nice powers and their proxies. It’s additionally a hopeful reminder that no matter they destroy at this time, we’ll rebuild tomorrow: brick by brick, wall by wall, home by home, faculty by faculty, hospital by hospital, church by church, mosque by mosque, village by village, metropolis by metropolis, breath by breath, life by life.
Ai Weiwei, “What You See is What You See” (2024), toy bricks (WOMA), ~110 x 199 inches (280 x 560 cm)
Ai Weiwei, “Nord Stream #1” (2024), toy bricks (WOMA), ~220 1/2 x 137 3/4 inches (560 x 350 cm)
Within the background: Ai Weiwei, “Water Lilies #3” (2023), toy bricks (WOMA), ~110 x 598 inches (280 x 1520 cm)
Ai Weiwei, “The Last Supper in Turquoise” (2022), toy bricks (WOMA), ~283 1/2 x 141 3/4 inches (720 x 360 cm)
Ai Weiwei, “Truth” (2023), toy bricks (WOMA), ~47 x 47 inches (120 x 120 cm)
What You See Is What You See continues at Faurschou New York (148 Inexperienced Avenue, Greenpoint, Brooklyn) by means of February 23, 2025.