Ai Wei Wei does not care what you think
A New Chatpter: Ai Weiwei’s Fearless Dialogue with the Past and Future
By
Rhea Mathur
February 17, 2025
What does an exhibition with a press release generated by ChatGPT4 look like? Ai Wei Wei, is no stranger to using artificial intelligence to create art. At the start of 2024, his exhibition in Piccadilly Circus, Ai vs AI, asked eighty-one questions, representing the length of time he spent incarcerated in China, from the general public and AI, posting the answers online. When asked how he feels about the growing concerns around AI using existing digital archives to recreate works, the artist stated that anything that can be easily copied is meaningless in the first place. He also says that Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse would have had to rethink their work significantly if they had been artists in this new world. In this context of re-invention, where the focus is on creating something that cannot easily be recreated, his latest exhibition - A New Chatpter (7 February – 15 March 2025) at Lisson Gallery, certainly fits the bill.
Ai Wei Wei cleverly uses Google’s Gemini to generate his title, ‘A New Chatpter,’ and adds a typo, something AI could never do. The use of technology in the title symbolises the artist's desire for innovation. He uses the tools presented to him, looking for contemporary and meaningful ways to tell a story. He similarly uses impressionist artwork, particularly inspired in this exhibition by Paul Gauguin and Vincent Van Gogh, recreating their styles to create a new artwork form. Ai’s works in this exhibition create a playful conversation with the past and the future, highlighting how we are in charge of understanding one and envisioning the other.
The focus of this exhibition is undoubtedly Where Do We Come From? Where Are We? Where Are We Going? (2023), created using toy bricks that, on close inspection, are tiny Lego pieces put close to each other to create a visual tapestry. From first impressions, the artwork looks like an oil painting inspired by Gauguin’s paintings but is slightly blurry. Upon moving closer to the painting, the tiny toy pieces reveal themselves, placed together to create a mosaic. Another way of looking at this artwork is to focus on the pixelation effect that Ai creates, making each brick appear like a pixel and look like digital art but in physical form.
In the top right corner of Ai’s work is a large pink cloud that references the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Below that is a black and white dog sitting calmly, watching three women. The women are reminiscent of the Tahitian women in Gauguin’s paintings, where the child's presence references his 1897 oil on canvas painting, Te Rerioa. Introduced to his work at a young age, Ai’s inspiration from Gauguin’s work is also fitting, given that the impressionist artist’s main aim through his work was to create something no one had ever seen before. Gauguin’s travels to French Polynesia stemmed from a hope to see and paint something magical that differed from his contemporaries who painted French landscapes. While his paintings did not reflect the colonised reality in French Polynesia, they are emblematic of a more significant desire for artists to innovate, similar to Ai.
In his hunt to create something unique, Ai is also known to collect things thrown away or considered useless to one day find use in his artwork. In 2023, he told the Guardian that the British factory, Brown & Co., had recently closed with thirty tonnes of buttons to throw away. Ai asked for them, and they were transported to his Berlin studio, where they were waiting for an idea to strike. At the Lisson Gallery, we see these varieties of buttons employed together with fabric to create the flag of China and 2024 titled F.U.C.K, where four Second World War military stretchers spell out the provocative word. The buttons create a similar effect to the tiny pieces of Lego. They bring their complexity to the work in varying sizes and colours, restricting and simultaneously helping define it.
Past the main exhibition room is a room with several more minor works, including a white and blue porcelain lion trapped in white Lego pieces. Next to the small white table with this work is one with an ancient bronze artefact, with tiny coloured bricks almost blended into its fabric. This use of materials historically employed to create renowned works of art and combine them with pieces of plastic bricks that make them seem pixelated and lost is a direct reference to the increasing digitisation. However, with a large piece of fabric laden with buttons reading “Go Fuck Yourself”, it is clear that Ai Wei Wei is not scared. Like past works, technology is a tool to understand and illustrate today and tomorrow. The artist lets us know he is very much in charge.
What does an exhibition with a press release generated by ChatGPT4 look like? Ai Wei Wei, is no stranger to using artificial intelligence to create art. At the start of 2024, his exhibition in Piccadilly Circus, Ai vs AI, asked eighty-one questions, representing the length of time he spent incarcerated in China, from the general public and AI, posting the answers online. When asked how he feels about the growing concerns around AI using existing digital archives to recreate works, the artist stated that anything that can be easily copied is meaningless in the first place. He also says that Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse would have had to rethink their work significantly if they had been artists in this new world. In this context of re-invention, where the focus is on creating something that cannot easily be recreated, his latest exhibition - A New Chatpter (7 February – 15 March 2025) at Lisson Gallery, certainly fits the bill.
Ai Wei Wei cleverly uses Google’s Gemini to generate his title, ‘A New Chatpter,’ and adds a typo, something AI could never do. The use of technology in the title symbolises the artist's desire for innovation. He uses the tools presented to him, looking for contemporary and meaningful ways to tell a story. He similarly uses impressionist artwork, particularly inspired in this exhibition by Paul Gauguin and Vincent Van Gogh, recreating their styles to create a new artwork form. Ai’s works in this exhibition create a playful conversation with the past and the future, highlighting how we are in charge of understanding one and envisioning the other.
The focus of this exhibition is undoubtedly Where Do We Come From? Where Are We? Where Are We Going? (2023), created using toy bricks that, on close inspection, are tiny Lego pieces put close to each other to create a visual tapestry. From first impressions, the artwork looks like an oil painting inspired by Gauguin’s paintings but is slightly blurry. Upon moving closer to the painting, the tiny toy pieces reveal themselves, placed together to create a mosaic. Another way of looking at this artwork is to focus on the pixelation effect that Ai creates, making each brick appear like a pixel and look like digital art but in physical form.
In the top right corner of Ai’s work is a large pink cloud that references the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Below that is a black and white dog sitting calmly, watching three women. The women are reminiscent of the Tahitian women in Gauguin’s paintings, where the child's presence references his 1897 oil on canvas painting, Te Rerioa. Introduced to his work at a young age, Ai’s inspiration from Gauguin’s work is also fitting, given that the impressionist artist’s main aim through his work was to create something no one had ever seen before. Gauguin’s travels to French Polynesia stemmed from a hope to see and paint something magical that differed from his contemporaries who painted French landscapes. While his paintings did not reflect the colonised reality in French Polynesia, they are emblematic of a more significant desire for artists to innovate, similar to Ai.
In his hunt to create something unique, Ai is also known to collect things thrown away or considered useless to one day find use in his artwork. In 2023, he told the Guardian that the British factory, Brown & Co., had recently closed with thirty tonnes of buttons to throw away. Ai asked for them, and they were transported to his Berlin studio, where they were waiting for an idea to strike. At the Lisson Gallery, we see these varieties of buttons employed together with fabric to create the flag of China and 2024 titled F.U.C.K, where four Second World War military stretchers spell out the provocative word. The buttons create a similar effect to the tiny pieces of Lego. They bring their complexity to the work in varying sizes and colours, restricting and simultaneously helping define it.
Past the main exhibition room is a room with several more minor works, including a white and blue porcelain lion trapped in white Lego pieces. Next to the small white table with this work is one with an ancient bronze artefact, with tiny coloured bricks almost blended into its fabric. This use of materials historically employed to create renowned works of art and combine them with pieces of plastic bricks that make them seem pixelated and lost is a direct reference to the increasing digitisation. However, with a large piece of fabric laden with buttons reading “Go Fuck Yourself”, it is clear that Ai Wei Wei is not scared. Like past works, technology is a tool to understand and illustrate today and tomorrow. The artist lets us know he is very much in charge.
What does an exhibition with a press release generated by ChatGPT4 look like? Ai Wei Wei, is no stranger to using artificial intelligence to create art. At the start of 2024, his exhibition in Piccadilly Circus, Ai vs AI, asked eighty-one questions, representing the length of time he spent incarcerated in China, from the general public and AI, posting the answers online. When asked how he feels about the growing concerns around AI using existing digital archives to recreate works, the artist stated that anything that can be easily copied is meaningless in the first place. He also says that Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse would have had to rethink their work significantly if they had been artists in this new world. In this context of re-invention, where the focus is on creating something that cannot easily be recreated, his latest exhibition - A New Chatpter (7 February – 15 March 2025) at Lisson Gallery, certainly fits the bill.
Ai Wei Wei cleverly uses Google’s Gemini to generate his title, ‘A New Chatpter,’ and adds a typo, something AI could never do. The use of technology in the title symbolises the artist's desire for innovation. He uses the tools presented to him, looking for contemporary and meaningful ways to tell a story. He similarly uses impressionist artwork, particularly inspired in this exhibition by Paul Gauguin and Vincent Van Gogh, recreating their styles to create a new artwork form. Ai’s works in this exhibition create a playful conversation with the past and the future, highlighting how we are in charge of understanding one and envisioning the other.
The focus of this exhibition is undoubtedly Where Do We Come From? Where Are We? Where Are We Going? (2023), created using toy bricks that, on close inspection, are tiny Lego pieces put close to each other to create a visual tapestry. From first impressions, the artwork looks like an oil painting inspired by Gauguin’s paintings but is slightly blurry. Upon moving closer to the painting, the tiny toy pieces reveal themselves, placed together to create a mosaic. Another way of looking at this artwork is to focus on the pixelation effect that Ai creates, making each brick appear like a pixel and look like digital art but in physical form.
In the top right corner of Ai’s work is a large pink cloud that references the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Below that is a black and white dog sitting calmly, watching three women. The women are reminiscent of the Tahitian women in Gauguin’s paintings, where the child's presence references his 1897 oil on canvas painting, Te Rerioa. Introduced to his work at a young age, Ai’s inspiration from Gauguin’s work is also fitting, given that the impressionist artist’s main aim through his work was to create something no one had ever seen before. Gauguin’s travels to French Polynesia stemmed from a hope to see and paint something magical that differed from his contemporaries who painted French landscapes. While his paintings did not reflect the colonised reality in French Polynesia, they are emblematic of a more significant desire for artists to innovate, similar to Ai.
In his hunt to create something unique, Ai is also known to collect things thrown away or considered useless to one day find use in his artwork. In 2023, he told the Guardian that the British factory, Brown & Co., had recently closed with thirty tonnes of buttons to throw away. Ai asked for them, and they were transported to his Berlin studio, where they were waiting for an idea to strike. At the Lisson Gallery, we see these varieties of buttons employed together with fabric to create the flag of China and 2024 titled F.U.C.K, where four Second World War military stretchers spell out the provocative word. The buttons create a similar effect to the tiny pieces of Lego. They bring their complexity to the work in varying sizes and colours, restricting and simultaneously helping define it.
Past the main exhibition room is a room with several more minor works, including a white and blue porcelain lion trapped in white Lego pieces. Next to the small white table with this work is one with an ancient bronze artefact, with tiny coloured bricks almost blended into its fabric. This use of materials historically employed to create renowned works of art and combine them with pieces of plastic bricks that make them seem pixelated and lost is a direct reference to the increasing digitisation. However, with a large piece of fabric laden with buttons reading “Go Fuck Yourself”, it is clear that Ai Wei Wei is not scared. Like past works, technology is a tool to understand and illustrate today and tomorrow. The artist lets us know he is very much in charge.
What does an exhibition with a press release generated by ChatGPT4 look like? Ai Wei Wei, is no stranger to using artificial intelligence to create art. At the start of 2024, his exhibition in Piccadilly Circus, Ai vs AI, asked eighty-one questions, representing the length of time he spent incarcerated in China, from the general public and AI, posting the answers online. When asked how he feels about the growing concerns around AI using existing digital archives to recreate works, the artist stated that anything that can be easily copied is meaningless in the first place. He also says that Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse would have had to rethink their work significantly if they had been artists in this new world. In this context of re-invention, where the focus is on creating something that cannot easily be recreated, his latest exhibition - A New Chatpter (7 February – 15 March 2025) at Lisson Gallery, certainly fits the bill.
Ai Wei Wei cleverly uses Google’s Gemini to generate his title, ‘A New Chatpter,’ and adds a typo, something AI could never do. The use of technology in the title symbolises the artist's desire for innovation. He uses the tools presented to him, looking for contemporary and meaningful ways to tell a story. He similarly uses impressionist artwork, particularly inspired in this exhibition by Paul Gauguin and Vincent Van Gogh, recreating their styles to create a new artwork form. Ai’s works in this exhibition create a playful conversation with the past and the future, highlighting how we are in charge of understanding one and envisioning the other.
The focus of this exhibition is undoubtedly Where Do We Come From? Where Are We? Where Are We Going? (2023), created using toy bricks that, on close inspection, are tiny Lego pieces put close to each other to create a visual tapestry. From first impressions, the artwork looks like an oil painting inspired by Gauguin’s paintings but is slightly blurry. Upon moving closer to the painting, the tiny toy pieces reveal themselves, placed together to create a mosaic. Another way of looking at this artwork is to focus on the pixelation effect that Ai creates, making each brick appear like a pixel and look like digital art but in physical form.
In the top right corner of Ai’s work is a large pink cloud that references the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Below that is a black and white dog sitting calmly, watching three women. The women are reminiscent of the Tahitian women in Gauguin’s paintings, where the child's presence references his 1897 oil on canvas painting, Te Rerioa. Introduced to his work at a young age, Ai’s inspiration from Gauguin’s work is also fitting, given that the impressionist artist’s main aim through his work was to create something no one had ever seen before. Gauguin’s travels to French Polynesia stemmed from a hope to see and paint something magical that differed from his contemporaries who painted French landscapes. While his paintings did not reflect the colonised reality in French Polynesia, they are emblematic of a more significant desire for artists to innovate, similar to Ai.
In his hunt to create something unique, Ai is also known to collect things thrown away or considered useless to one day find use in his artwork. In 2023, he told the Guardian that the British factory, Brown & Co., had recently closed with thirty tonnes of buttons to throw away. Ai asked for them, and they were transported to his Berlin studio, where they were waiting for an idea to strike. At the Lisson Gallery, we see these varieties of buttons employed together with fabric to create the flag of China and 2024 titled F.U.C.K, where four Second World War military stretchers spell out the provocative word. The buttons create a similar effect to the tiny pieces of Lego. They bring their complexity to the work in varying sizes and colours, restricting and simultaneously helping define it.
Past the main exhibition room is a room with several more minor works, including a white and blue porcelain lion trapped in white Lego pieces. Next to the small white table with this work is one with an ancient bronze artefact, with tiny coloured bricks almost blended into its fabric. This use of materials historically employed to create renowned works of art and combine them with pieces of plastic bricks that make them seem pixelated and lost is a direct reference to the increasing digitisation. However, with a large piece of fabric laden with buttons reading “Go Fuck Yourself”, it is clear that Ai Wei Wei is not scared. Like past works, technology is a tool to understand and illustrate today and tomorrow. The artist lets us know he is very much in charge.
What does an exhibition with a press release generated by ChatGPT4 look like? Ai Wei Wei, is no stranger to using artificial intelligence to create art. At the start of 2024, his exhibition in Piccadilly Circus, Ai vs AI, asked eighty-one questions, representing the length of time he spent incarcerated in China, from the general public and AI, posting the answers online. When asked how he feels about the growing concerns around AI using existing digital archives to recreate works, the artist stated that anything that can be easily copied is meaningless in the first place. He also says that Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse would have had to rethink their work significantly if they had been artists in this new world. In this context of re-invention, where the focus is on creating something that cannot easily be recreated, his latest exhibition - A New Chatpter (7 February – 15 March 2025) at Lisson Gallery, certainly fits the bill.
Ai Wei Wei cleverly uses Google’s Gemini to generate his title, ‘A New Chatpter,’ and adds a typo, something AI could never do. The use of technology in the title symbolises the artist's desire for innovation. He uses the tools presented to him, looking for contemporary and meaningful ways to tell a story. He similarly uses impressionist artwork, particularly inspired in this exhibition by Paul Gauguin and Vincent Van Gogh, recreating their styles to create a new artwork form. Ai’s works in this exhibition create a playful conversation with the past and the future, highlighting how we are in charge of understanding one and envisioning the other.
The focus of this exhibition is undoubtedly Where Do We Come From? Where Are We? Where Are We Going? (2023), created using toy bricks that, on close inspection, are tiny Lego pieces put close to each other to create a visual tapestry. From first impressions, the artwork looks like an oil painting inspired by Gauguin’s paintings but is slightly blurry. Upon moving closer to the painting, the tiny toy pieces reveal themselves, placed together to create a mosaic. Another way of looking at this artwork is to focus on the pixelation effect that Ai creates, making each brick appear like a pixel and look like digital art but in physical form.
In the top right corner of Ai’s work is a large pink cloud that references the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Below that is a black and white dog sitting calmly, watching three women. The women are reminiscent of the Tahitian women in Gauguin’s paintings, where the child's presence references his 1897 oil on canvas painting, Te Rerioa. Introduced to his work at a young age, Ai’s inspiration from Gauguin’s work is also fitting, given that the impressionist artist’s main aim through his work was to create something no one had ever seen before. Gauguin’s travels to French Polynesia stemmed from a hope to see and paint something magical that differed from his contemporaries who painted French landscapes. While his paintings did not reflect the colonised reality in French Polynesia, they are emblematic of a more significant desire for artists to innovate, similar to Ai.
In his hunt to create something unique, Ai is also known to collect things thrown away or considered useless to one day find use in his artwork. In 2023, he told the Guardian that the British factory, Brown & Co., had recently closed with thirty tonnes of buttons to throw away. Ai asked for them, and they were transported to his Berlin studio, where they were waiting for an idea to strike. At the Lisson Gallery, we see these varieties of buttons employed together with fabric to create the flag of China and 2024 titled F.U.C.K, where four Second World War military stretchers spell out the provocative word. The buttons create a similar effect to the tiny pieces of Lego. They bring their complexity to the work in varying sizes and colours, restricting and simultaneously helping define it.
Past the main exhibition room is a room with several more minor works, including a white and blue porcelain lion trapped in white Lego pieces. Next to the small white table with this work is one with an ancient bronze artefact, with tiny coloured bricks almost blended into its fabric. This use of materials historically employed to create renowned works of art and combine them with pieces of plastic bricks that make them seem pixelated and lost is a direct reference to the increasing digitisation. However, with a large piece of fabric laden with buttons reading “Go Fuck Yourself”, it is clear that Ai Wei Wei is not scared. Like past works, technology is a tool to understand and illustrate today and tomorrow. The artist lets us know he is very much in charge.
What does an exhibition with a press release generated by ChatGPT4 look like? Ai Wei Wei, is no stranger to using artificial intelligence to create art. At the start of 2024, his exhibition in Piccadilly Circus, Ai vs AI, asked eighty-one questions, representing the length of time he spent incarcerated in China, from the general public and AI, posting the answers online. When asked how he feels about the growing concerns around AI using existing digital archives to recreate works, the artist stated that anything that can be easily copied is meaningless in the first place. He also says that Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse would have had to rethink their work significantly if they had been artists in this new world. In this context of re-invention, where the focus is on creating something that cannot easily be recreated, his latest exhibition - A New Chatpter (7 February – 15 March 2025) at Lisson Gallery, certainly fits the bill.
Ai Wei Wei cleverly uses Google’s Gemini to generate his title, ‘A New Chatpter,’ and adds a typo, something AI could never do. The use of technology in the title symbolises the artist's desire for innovation. He uses the tools presented to him, looking for contemporary and meaningful ways to tell a story. He similarly uses impressionist artwork, particularly inspired in this exhibition by Paul Gauguin and Vincent Van Gogh, recreating their styles to create a new artwork form. Ai’s works in this exhibition create a playful conversation with the past and the future, highlighting how we are in charge of understanding one and envisioning the other.
The focus of this exhibition is undoubtedly Where Do We Come From? Where Are We? Where Are We Going? (2023), created using toy bricks that, on close inspection, are tiny Lego pieces put close to each other to create a visual tapestry. From first impressions, the artwork looks like an oil painting inspired by Gauguin’s paintings but is slightly blurry. Upon moving closer to the painting, the tiny toy pieces reveal themselves, placed together to create a mosaic. Another way of looking at this artwork is to focus on the pixelation effect that Ai creates, making each brick appear like a pixel and look like digital art but in physical form.
In the top right corner of Ai’s work is a large pink cloud that references the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Below that is a black and white dog sitting calmly, watching three women. The women are reminiscent of the Tahitian women in Gauguin’s paintings, where the child's presence references his 1897 oil on canvas painting, Te Rerioa. Introduced to his work at a young age, Ai’s inspiration from Gauguin’s work is also fitting, given that the impressionist artist’s main aim through his work was to create something no one had ever seen before. Gauguin’s travels to French Polynesia stemmed from a hope to see and paint something magical that differed from his contemporaries who painted French landscapes. While his paintings did not reflect the colonised reality in French Polynesia, they are emblematic of a more significant desire for artists to innovate, similar to Ai.
In his hunt to create something unique, Ai is also known to collect things thrown away or considered useless to one day find use in his artwork. In 2023, he told the Guardian that the British factory, Brown & Co., had recently closed with thirty tonnes of buttons to throw away. Ai asked for them, and they were transported to his Berlin studio, where they were waiting for an idea to strike. At the Lisson Gallery, we see these varieties of buttons employed together with fabric to create the flag of China and 2024 titled F.U.C.K, where four Second World War military stretchers spell out the provocative word. The buttons create a similar effect to the tiny pieces of Lego. They bring their complexity to the work in varying sizes and colours, restricting and simultaneously helping define it.
Past the main exhibition room is a room with several more minor works, including a white and blue porcelain lion trapped in white Lego pieces. Next to the small white table with this work is one with an ancient bronze artefact, with tiny coloured bricks almost blended into its fabric. This use of materials historically employed to create renowned works of art and combine them with pieces of plastic bricks that make them seem pixelated and lost is a direct reference to the increasing digitisation. However, with a large piece of fabric laden with buttons reading “Go Fuck Yourself”, it is clear that Ai Wei Wei is not scared. Like past works, technology is a tool to understand and illustrate today and tomorrow. The artist lets us know he is very much in charge.
What does an exhibition with a press release generated by ChatGPT4 look like? Ai Wei Wei, is no stranger to using artificial intelligence to create art. At the start of 2024, his exhibition in Piccadilly Circus, Ai vs AI, asked eighty-one questions, representing the length of time he spent incarcerated in China, from the general public and AI, posting the answers online. When asked how he feels about the growing concerns around AI using existing digital archives to recreate works, the artist stated that anything that can be easily copied is meaningless in the first place. He also says that Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse would have had to rethink their work significantly if they had been artists in this new world. In this context of re-invention, where the focus is on creating something that cannot easily be recreated, his latest exhibition - A New Chatpter (7 February – 15 March 2025) at Lisson Gallery, certainly fits the bill.
Ai Wei Wei cleverly uses Google’s Gemini to generate his title, ‘A New Chatpter,’ and adds a typo, something AI could never do. The use of technology in the title symbolises the artist's desire for innovation. He uses the tools presented to him, looking for contemporary and meaningful ways to tell a story. He similarly uses impressionist artwork, particularly inspired in this exhibition by Paul Gauguin and Vincent Van Gogh, recreating their styles to create a new artwork form. Ai’s works in this exhibition create a playful conversation with the past and the future, highlighting how we are in charge of understanding one and envisioning the other.
The focus of this exhibition is undoubtedly Where Do We Come From? Where Are We? Where Are We Going? (2023), created using toy bricks that, on close inspection, are tiny Lego pieces put close to each other to create a visual tapestry. From first impressions, the artwork looks like an oil painting inspired by Gauguin’s paintings but is slightly blurry. Upon moving closer to the painting, the tiny toy pieces reveal themselves, placed together to create a mosaic. Another way of looking at this artwork is to focus on the pixelation effect that Ai creates, making each brick appear like a pixel and look like digital art but in physical form.
In the top right corner of Ai’s work is a large pink cloud that references the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Below that is a black and white dog sitting calmly, watching three women. The women are reminiscent of the Tahitian women in Gauguin’s paintings, where the child's presence references his 1897 oil on canvas painting, Te Rerioa. Introduced to his work at a young age, Ai’s inspiration from Gauguin’s work is also fitting, given that the impressionist artist’s main aim through his work was to create something no one had ever seen before. Gauguin’s travels to French Polynesia stemmed from a hope to see and paint something magical that differed from his contemporaries who painted French landscapes. While his paintings did not reflect the colonised reality in French Polynesia, they are emblematic of a more significant desire for artists to innovate, similar to Ai.
In his hunt to create something unique, Ai is also known to collect things thrown away or considered useless to one day find use in his artwork. In 2023, he told the Guardian that the British factory, Brown & Co., had recently closed with thirty tonnes of buttons to throw away. Ai asked for them, and they were transported to his Berlin studio, where they were waiting for an idea to strike. At the Lisson Gallery, we see these varieties of buttons employed together with fabric to create the flag of China and 2024 titled F.U.C.K, where four Second World War military stretchers spell out the provocative word. The buttons create a similar effect to the tiny pieces of Lego. They bring their complexity to the work in varying sizes and colours, restricting and simultaneously helping define it.
Past the main exhibition room is a room with several more minor works, including a white and blue porcelain lion trapped in white Lego pieces. Next to the small white table with this work is one with an ancient bronze artefact, with tiny coloured bricks almost blended into its fabric. This use of materials historically employed to create renowned works of art and combine them with pieces of plastic bricks that make them seem pixelated and lost is a direct reference to the increasing digitisation. However, with a large piece of fabric laden with buttons reading “Go Fuck Yourself”, it is clear that Ai Wei Wei is not scared. Like past works, technology is a tool to understand and illustrate today and tomorrow. The artist lets us know he is very much in charge.
What does an exhibition with a press release generated by ChatGPT4 look like? Ai Wei Wei, is no stranger to using artificial intelligence to create art. At the start of 2024, his exhibition in Piccadilly Circus, Ai vs AI, asked eighty-one questions, representing the length of time he spent incarcerated in China, from the general public and AI, posting the answers online. When asked how he feels about the growing concerns around AI using existing digital archives to recreate works, the artist stated that anything that can be easily copied is meaningless in the first place. He also says that Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse would have had to rethink their work significantly if they had been artists in this new world. In this context of re-invention, where the focus is on creating something that cannot easily be recreated, his latest exhibition - A New Chatpter (7 February – 15 March 2025) at Lisson Gallery, certainly fits the bill.
Ai Wei Wei cleverly uses Google’s Gemini to generate his title, ‘A New Chatpter,’ and adds a typo, something AI could never do. The use of technology in the title symbolises the artist's desire for innovation. He uses the tools presented to him, looking for contemporary and meaningful ways to tell a story. He similarly uses impressionist artwork, particularly inspired in this exhibition by Paul Gauguin and Vincent Van Gogh, recreating their styles to create a new artwork form. Ai’s works in this exhibition create a playful conversation with the past and the future, highlighting how we are in charge of understanding one and envisioning the other.
The focus of this exhibition is undoubtedly Where Do We Come From? Where Are We? Where Are We Going? (2023), created using toy bricks that, on close inspection, are tiny Lego pieces put close to each other to create a visual tapestry. From first impressions, the artwork looks like an oil painting inspired by Gauguin’s paintings but is slightly blurry. Upon moving closer to the painting, the tiny toy pieces reveal themselves, placed together to create a mosaic. Another way of looking at this artwork is to focus on the pixelation effect that Ai creates, making each brick appear like a pixel and look like digital art but in physical form.
In the top right corner of Ai’s work is a large pink cloud that references the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Below that is a black and white dog sitting calmly, watching three women. The women are reminiscent of the Tahitian women in Gauguin’s paintings, where the child's presence references his 1897 oil on canvas painting, Te Rerioa. Introduced to his work at a young age, Ai’s inspiration from Gauguin’s work is also fitting, given that the impressionist artist’s main aim through his work was to create something no one had ever seen before. Gauguin’s travels to French Polynesia stemmed from a hope to see and paint something magical that differed from his contemporaries who painted French landscapes. While his paintings did not reflect the colonised reality in French Polynesia, they are emblematic of a more significant desire for artists to innovate, similar to Ai.
In his hunt to create something unique, Ai is also known to collect things thrown away or considered useless to one day find use in his artwork. In 2023, he told the Guardian that the British factory, Brown & Co., had recently closed with thirty tonnes of buttons to throw away. Ai asked for them, and they were transported to his Berlin studio, where they were waiting for an idea to strike. At the Lisson Gallery, we see these varieties of buttons employed together with fabric to create the flag of China and 2024 titled F.U.C.K, where four Second World War military stretchers spell out the provocative word. The buttons create a similar effect to the tiny pieces of Lego. They bring their complexity to the work in varying sizes and colours, restricting and simultaneously helping define it.
Past the main exhibition room is a room with several more minor works, including a white and blue porcelain lion trapped in white Lego pieces. Next to the small white table with this work is one with an ancient bronze artefact, with tiny coloured bricks almost blended into its fabric. This use of materials historically employed to create renowned works of art and combine them with pieces of plastic bricks that make them seem pixelated and lost is a direct reference to the increasing digitisation. However, with a large piece of fabric laden with buttons reading “Go Fuck Yourself”, it is clear that Ai Wei Wei is not scared. Like past works, technology is a tool to understand and illustrate today and tomorrow. The artist lets us know he is very much in charge.
What does an exhibition with a press release generated by ChatGPT4 look like? Ai Wei Wei, is no stranger to using artificial intelligence to create art. At the start of 2024, his exhibition in Piccadilly Circus, Ai vs AI, asked eighty-one questions, representing the length of time he spent incarcerated in China, from the general public and AI, posting the answers online. When asked how he feels about the growing concerns around AI using existing digital archives to recreate works, the artist stated that anything that can be easily copied is meaningless in the first place. He also says that Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse would have had to rethink their work significantly if they had been artists in this new world. In this context of re-invention, where the focus is on creating something that cannot easily be recreated, his latest exhibition - A New Chatpter (7 February – 15 March 2025) at Lisson Gallery, certainly fits the bill.
Ai Wei Wei cleverly uses Google’s Gemini to generate his title, ‘A New Chatpter,’ and adds a typo, something AI could never do. The use of technology in the title symbolises the artist's desire for innovation. He uses the tools presented to him, looking for contemporary and meaningful ways to tell a story. He similarly uses impressionist artwork, particularly inspired in this exhibition by Paul Gauguin and Vincent Van Gogh, recreating their styles to create a new artwork form. Ai’s works in this exhibition create a playful conversation with the past and the future, highlighting how we are in charge of understanding one and envisioning the other.
The focus of this exhibition is undoubtedly Where Do We Come From? Where Are We? Where Are We Going? (2023), created using toy bricks that, on close inspection, are tiny Lego pieces put close to each other to create a visual tapestry. From first impressions, the artwork looks like an oil painting inspired by Gauguin’s paintings but is slightly blurry. Upon moving closer to the painting, the tiny toy pieces reveal themselves, placed together to create a mosaic. Another way of looking at this artwork is to focus on the pixelation effect that Ai creates, making each brick appear like a pixel and look like digital art but in physical form.
In the top right corner of Ai’s work is a large pink cloud that references the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Below that is a black and white dog sitting calmly, watching three women. The women are reminiscent of the Tahitian women in Gauguin’s paintings, where the child's presence references his 1897 oil on canvas painting, Te Rerioa. Introduced to his work at a young age, Ai’s inspiration from Gauguin’s work is also fitting, given that the impressionist artist’s main aim through his work was to create something no one had ever seen before. Gauguin’s travels to French Polynesia stemmed from a hope to see and paint something magical that differed from his contemporaries who painted French landscapes. While his paintings did not reflect the colonised reality in French Polynesia, they are emblematic of a more significant desire for artists to innovate, similar to Ai.
In his hunt to create something unique, Ai is also known to collect things thrown away or considered useless to one day find use in his artwork. In 2023, he told the Guardian that the British factory, Brown & Co., had recently closed with thirty tonnes of buttons to throw away. Ai asked for them, and they were transported to his Berlin studio, where they were waiting for an idea to strike. At the Lisson Gallery, we see these varieties of buttons employed together with fabric to create the flag of China and 2024 titled F.U.C.K, where four Second World War military stretchers spell out the provocative word. The buttons create a similar effect to the tiny pieces of Lego. They bring their complexity to the work in varying sizes and colours, restricting and simultaneously helping define it.
Past the main exhibition room is a room with several more minor works, including a white and blue porcelain lion trapped in white Lego pieces. Next to the small white table with this work is one with an ancient bronze artefact, with tiny coloured bricks almost blended into its fabric. This use of materials historically employed to create renowned works of art and combine them with pieces of plastic bricks that make them seem pixelated and lost is a direct reference to the increasing digitisation. However, with a large piece of fabric laden with buttons reading “Go Fuck Yourself”, it is clear that Ai Wei Wei is not scared. Like past works, technology is a tool to understand and illustrate today and tomorrow. The artist lets us know he is very much in charge.
What does an exhibition with a press release generated by ChatGPT4 look like? Ai Wei Wei, is no stranger to using artificial intelligence to create art. At the start of 2024, his exhibition in Piccadilly Circus, Ai vs AI, asked eighty-one questions, representing the length of time he spent incarcerated in China, from the general public and AI, posting the answers online. When asked how he feels about the growing concerns around AI using existing digital archives to recreate works, the artist stated that anything that can be easily copied is meaningless in the first place. He also says that Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse would have had to rethink their work significantly if they had been artists in this new world. In this context of re-invention, where the focus is on creating something that cannot easily be recreated, his latest exhibition - A New Chatpter (7 February – 15 March 2025) at Lisson Gallery, certainly fits the bill.
Ai Wei Wei cleverly uses Google’s Gemini to generate his title, ‘A New Chatpter,’ and adds a typo, something AI could never do. The use of technology in the title symbolises the artist's desire for innovation. He uses the tools presented to him, looking for contemporary and meaningful ways to tell a story. He similarly uses impressionist artwork, particularly inspired in this exhibition by Paul Gauguin and Vincent Van Gogh, recreating their styles to create a new artwork form. Ai’s works in this exhibition create a playful conversation with the past and the future, highlighting how we are in charge of understanding one and envisioning the other.
The focus of this exhibition is undoubtedly Where Do We Come From? Where Are We? Where Are We Going? (2023), created using toy bricks that, on close inspection, are tiny Lego pieces put close to each other to create a visual tapestry. From first impressions, the artwork looks like an oil painting inspired by Gauguin’s paintings but is slightly blurry. Upon moving closer to the painting, the tiny toy pieces reveal themselves, placed together to create a mosaic. Another way of looking at this artwork is to focus on the pixelation effect that Ai creates, making each brick appear like a pixel and look like digital art but in physical form.
In the top right corner of Ai’s work is a large pink cloud that references the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Below that is a black and white dog sitting calmly, watching three women. The women are reminiscent of the Tahitian women in Gauguin’s paintings, where the child's presence references his 1897 oil on canvas painting, Te Rerioa. Introduced to his work at a young age, Ai’s inspiration from Gauguin’s work is also fitting, given that the impressionist artist’s main aim through his work was to create something no one had ever seen before. Gauguin’s travels to French Polynesia stemmed from a hope to see and paint something magical that differed from his contemporaries who painted French landscapes. While his paintings did not reflect the colonised reality in French Polynesia, they are emblematic of a more significant desire for artists to innovate, similar to Ai.
In his hunt to create something unique, Ai is also known to collect things thrown away or considered useless to one day find use in his artwork. In 2023, he told the Guardian that the British factory, Brown & Co., had recently closed with thirty tonnes of buttons to throw away. Ai asked for them, and they were transported to his Berlin studio, where they were waiting for an idea to strike. At the Lisson Gallery, we see these varieties of buttons employed together with fabric to create the flag of China and 2024 titled F.U.C.K, where four Second World War military stretchers spell out the provocative word. The buttons create a similar effect to the tiny pieces of Lego. They bring their complexity to the work in varying sizes and colours, restricting and simultaneously helping define it.
Past the main exhibition room is a room with several more minor works, including a white and blue porcelain lion trapped in white Lego pieces. Next to the small white table with this work is one with an ancient bronze artefact, with tiny coloured bricks almost blended into its fabric. This use of materials historically employed to create renowned works of art and combine them with pieces of plastic bricks that make them seem pixelated and lost is a direct reference to the increasing digitisation. However, with a large piece of fabric laden with buttons reading “Go Fuck Yourself”, it is clear that Ai Wei Wei is not scared. Like past works, technology is a tool to understand and illustrate today and tomorrow. The artist lets us know he is very much in charge.
What does an exhibition with a press release generated by ChatGPT4 look like? Ai Wei Wei, is no stranger to using artificial intelligence to create art. At the start of 2024, his exhibition in Piccadilly Circus, Ai vs AI, asked eighty-one questions, representing the length of time he spent incarcerated in China, from the general public and AI, posting the answers online. When asked how he feels about the growing concerns around AI using existing digital archives to recreate works, the artist stated that anything that can be easily copied is meaningless in the first place. He also says that Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse would have had to rethink their work significantly if they had been artists in this new world. In this context of re-invention, where the focus is on creating something that cannot easily be recreated, his latest exhibition - A New Chatpter (7 February – 15 March 2025) at Lisson Gallery, certainly fits the bill.
Ai Wei Wei cleverly uses Google’s Gemini to generate his title, ‘A New Chatpter,’ and adds a typo, something AI could never do. The use of technology in the title symbolises the artist's desire for innovation. He uses the tools presented to him, looking for contemporary and meaningful ways to tell a story. He similarly uses impressionist artwork, particularly inspired in this exhibition by Paul Gauguin and Vincent Van Gogh, recreating their styles to create a new artwork form. Ai’s works in this exhibition create a playful conversation with the past and the future, highlighting how we are in charge of understanding one and envisioning the other.
The focus of this exhibition is undoubtedly Where Do We Come From? Where Are We? Where Are We Going? (2023), created using toy bricks that, on close inspection, are tiny Lego pieces put close to each other to create a visual tapestry. From first impressions, the artwork looks like an oil painting inspired by Gauguin’s paintings but is slightly blurry. Upon moving closer to the painting, the tiny toy pieces reveal themselves, placed together to create a mosaic. Another way of looking at this artwork is to focus on the pixelation effect that Ai creates, making each brick appear like a pixel and look like digital art but in physical form.
In the top right corner of Ai’s work is a large pink cloud that references the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Below that is a black and white dog sitting calmly, watching three women. The women are reminiscent of the Tahitian women in Gauguin’s paintings, where the child's presence references his 1897 oil on canvas painting, Te Rerioa. Introduced to his work at a young age, Ai’s inspiration from Gauguin’s work is also fitting, given that the impressionist artist’s main aim through his work was to create something no one had ever seen before. Gauguin’s travels to French Polynesia stemmed from a hope to see and paint something magical that differed from his contemporaries who painted French landscapes. While his paintings did not reflect the colonised reality in French Polynesia, they are emblematic of a more significant desire for artists to innovate, similar to Ai.
In his hunt to create something unique, Ai is also known to collect things thrown away or considered useless to one day find use in his artwork. In 2023, he told the Guardian that the British factory, Brown & Co., had recently closed with thirty tonnes of buttons to throw away. Ai asked for them, and they were transported to his Berlin studio, where they were waiting for an idea to strike. At the Lisson Gallery, we see these varieties of buttons employed together with fabric to create the flag of China and 2024 titled F.U.C.K, where four Second World War military stretchers spell out the provocative word. The buttons create a similar effect to the tiny pieces of Lego. They bring their complexity to the work in varying sizes and colours, restricting and simultaneously helping define it.
Past the main exhibition room is a room with several more minor works, including a white and blue porcelain lion trapped in white Lego pieces. Next to the small white table with this work is one with an ancient bronze artefact, with tiny coloured bricks almost blended into its fabric. This use of materials historically employed to create renowned works of art and combine them with pieces of plastic bricks that make them seem pixelated and lost is a direct reference to the increasing digitisation. However, with a large piece of fabric laden with buttons reading “Go Fuck Yourself”, it is clear that Ai Wei Wei is not scared. Like past works, technology is a tool to understand and illustrate today and tomorrow. The artist lets us know he is very much in charge.
