Fountain of light, 2007
Steel, glass crystals, wood
Ai Weiwei & Andreas Gursky
Louisiana, Copenhagen
My surprise Christmas present this year was to visit my great friend who lives in Copenhagen and to go to the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art. A small card was given to me with an image of Ai Weiwei on it and the flight informations on the back. Last weekend we went and had a great time, even though it was the coldest and snowiest weekend of the year, and again our return ticket was cancelled so we had to stay an extra night.
For those of you that have followed my blog for a while knows how I have been tracking Ai Weiwei's trail for the last couple of years, now when Ai Weiwei has been named the most powerful person in the Art world it feels quite appropriate.
Louisiana is one of Europe's most favored Museums, with beautiful surroundings and a panoramic view across Øresund. It has a large sculpture park and great contemporary Architecture linked to the original building. The first owner of the building, Alexander Brun named the house after his three wives that was all named Louise...
The museum though was created in 1958 by Knud W. Jensen who hired the architects Vilhelm Wohlert and Jørgen Bo to do the extensions in both directions coming out from the original building in a beautiful correlation to the nature, now seen as a milestone in modern Danish architecture.
Forever, 2003
42 bicycles
Ai Weiwei's work kept going around the globe and the attention only grew during his detention in China last year for 81 days. It is impressive though that Louisiana Museum managed to arrange this exhibit so shortly after his release. This bicycle piece is inspired by Marcel Ducamp and represents Chinese favorite means of transport and "Forever" as the brand. The bikes though is not going anywhere...
Trees, 2009-2010
Tree trunks from southern China
These camhorwood tree pieces has been bolted together, and the lifelessness is supposed to be a metaphor for growth and life. Here again he is also adding porcelain sculptures, this time as "Rocks", Ai Weiwei sees Porcelain as characteristic Chinese. How I wish the floor of the Louisiana was different for this exhibit, that the tiles had been covered up, I found it quite "interruptive" to the piece.
The crystal tower "Fountain of Light" (above), refers to a tower that was never built by the Russian architect Vladimir Tatlin in 1919.
Rocks
2009-2011
Porcelain
The Andreas Gursky exhibit was quite surprisingly awe-inspiring. Every single one of the large C-prints that were shown were worthy a long contemplation. My curiosity goes out to how he actually conceived the final large photographs. At first you might think it is realistic but quickly realizing the impossibility of one image representing the intense amount of "information". Louisiana describes Andreas Gursky´s work of art as "Extreme Sports". Hundreds, of images is being inter-weaved into one image, knowing that, I will leave the rest of the mystery to the visual artist and rather just enjoy.
Nurnberg, Grundig, 2003
C-print (insert)
99 Cent, 1999/2009
C-print (insert)
Pyongyang IV, 2007
C-print (insert)
Hamm, East Mine, 2008
C-print (insert)
The subjects of his images also keep surprising, here are clothes that is hanging by strings in a mining facility. Andreas Gursky has the talent of adding the formula one drivers to be an object of a master piece (unfortunately I don´t have a photo of this).
Paris, Montparnasse, 1993
C-print (insert)
With a large image of a fashion show, I am leaving the Louisiana Museum for this time. Wanting more of all three, Ai Weiwei, Andreas Gursky and the legendary edifice after the three Louise's.
With Love
Kristin
