Sunday 27 October 2013

ai weiwei - forever bicycles, 2013

Ai Weiwei is a Chinese artist and political activist. His sculpture, Forever Bicycles, was installed in Nathan Phillips Square in Toronto for Nuit Blanche in 2013. It is made up of 3144 bicycles.

I will let the pictures of it speak for themselves. It was an amazing thing to see.

The sculpture at a distance.

3144 real bicycle frames...

All the wheels are real, laced up bicycle wheels. They also spin freely and it is possible to play with the sculpture a bit.





Depending on how you look at it, the sculpture is a real eye bender. I was not the only one chuckling though at the irony of this particular sculpture being outside city hall, what with a mayor that openly hates cycling.




1 comment:

  1. Hi Chris,
    Do you have a booth to display your art at nightshift http://nightshift.alternativesjournal.ca/? Cause you should?

    If you don't do you have any prints could hang around the waterloobikes.ca booth?

    Here's what I'm thinking:
    * Two shelters on either side of a 'bicycle lounge'
    * The one shelter will have a winter bike, touring bike and typical dutch bike
    * The other side shelter will have new 'demo' bikes (folding, dutch cargo bike, extracycle, bike trailer)
    * In the lounge I'm going to have couches set up (coffee, hot cider) with bike culture videos playing ... essentially looping stuff from streetfilms - http://www.streetfilms.org/
    * I want to have speakers talk about essential bicycle maintenance, winter biking, bicycle touring (insert yourself here if you're able)
    * Richard Garvey is going to play a few sets from his bicycle inspired albums

    Let me know if you've got any ideas and if you're open to displaying some of your work either in a booth beside us or even amongst our stuff.

    Thanks,
    Graham

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