To read my new article Building Blocks of Reality: Ai Weiwei’s ‘Child’s’ Play’ in the Observer, go to:

Building Blocks of Reality: A Walkthrough of Ai Weiwei’s ‘Child’s’ Play’ at Vito Schnabel Gallery

The artist showcases pixel-like LEGO brick wall works of reimagined classic paintings and headline news that question the construction of our very reality.

By Stephen Wozniak

Child’s Play

October 24, 2024—February 22, 2025
Vito Schnabel Gallery
New York, NY
Email: vitoschnabel.com  

EXCERPT

The colorful and colossal LEGO brick works on view in Ai Weiwei’s Child’s Play, a new exhibition spanning two Vito Schnabel Gallery locations in Manhattan, are a vibrant reminder that the legendary conceptual artist is nothing if not provocative. To provoke, in Ai’s case, is to defy the very fabric of our common narratives, our cultural canons and the endless stream of all-hours news feeds. As Ai recently explained to me at the uptown gallery, defiance is the work of the “modern individual to locate themselves” among the masses. For Ai, that work comes in the innovative exploration of unexpected media, like LEGOs, because such “readymade” material is commonly used by those masses and offers his viewers a way into the art. Other key points of entry are images and subjects drawn from pop-cultural highlights and venerated historical paintings. Within those selections, Ai leaves us flies in the ointment—telling clues that something has gone awry; true provocations with which to explore critical ideas that may help us find the freedoms we seek and the control we once gave up without knowing.

While the work of Ai Weiwei questions the building blocks of our perception, our shifting morals, our inured states of being and seeing, he’s also commenting on how it’s done. Maybe he’s reiterating Marshall McLuhan’s classic “medium is the message” axiom here. In doing so, he highlights how the construction and deconstruction of leading and emerging narratives—the mirrors of reality itself—can be a regular activity of both information spinners and information consumers. Or he’s simply suggesting that we play with these ideas—and by keeping them in play—no single or dominant ideation will take over and oppress us any longer. And perhaps, at last, this will set us free. 

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