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The Art of Play with Ai Weiwei: An Interview

By Stephen Wozniak 

I talked with legendary artist Ai Weiwei about his new exhibition Child’s Play, which showcases pixel-like LEGO wall works of reimagined classic paintings and headline news that question our very reality.

EXCERPT

Stephen Wozniak 

Child’s Play is an extraordinary show featuring big art and even bigger themes. You’ve worked with LEGOs for over ten years, which seem like a truly fun, colorful and infinitely possible medium. What do they represent to you and how do you think they’re perceived by audiences, especially in the new works at Vito Schnabel Gallery? 

Ai Weiwei 

First, I always like to have a new possibility, to use a new language. Because, you know, the act and goal of painting has mostly been the same for years: to make the image look real, right? At least, in the beginning of art. 

Stephen Wozniak 

But that’s not your goal. 

Ai Weiwei 

Right but the problem is in the question “What is real?” “Is art real or is there a new reality?” So, I realized a LEGO can do the job to present this question. It’s industrially made, it’s structured and created by a computer—made from a digital design. So, the corresponding image pixels can be precisely identified to make my art out of LEGOs. That language not just relates to the earlier Greek mosaics but relates to new technology like the Internet and digitalization.

Painting can be very flat. You see what you see, right? And with LEGOs, it is not what you see. Your eyes are always shifting and changing. So that makes the game more interesting—of looking, you know, at least a way of looking. 

You want the viewer to participate in seeing. They can do this by trying to understand how the work is made. Everybody has toy-building and digital gaming experience, so the attempt to understand becomes interesting when looking at the art. But it’s not just about construction, but deconstruction—and that is quite interesting.

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