Art and the City is a public art festival that runs from 9 June until 23 September 2012 in Zürich West, a district in Zürich (Switzerland) that has undergone a dramatic transformation in the recent years. To experience this up-and-coming city district of Zürich, Art and the City invited more than 40 artists and artist groups from all over the world for an exhibition that includes sculptures, installations, performances, posters and interventions. This video takes you on a rather subjective and selective tour of the exhibition on 1 August, the Swiss National Day (which explains the empty streets and the rubber dinghies).

The exhibition includes artists who have been addressing issues of urban development since the 1970s such as Richard Tuttle, Fred Sandback, Yona Friedman and Charlotte Posenenske, as well as a younger generation of artists such as Christian Jankowski, Oscar Tuazon, Los Carpinteros, and Ai Weiwei.

Art and the City has been initiated by the Public Art Task Force (Arbeitsgruppe Kunst im öffentlichen Raum). The exhibition has been put together by the freelance curator and writer Christoph Doswald.

Art and the City. Public Art Festival in Zürich West. Zürich (Switzerland), August 1, 2012.

PS: As part of the Art and the City Public Art Festival, walking artist Hamish Fulton performed one of his slow walks along the Limmat river, called Limmat Art Walk Zürich 2012.

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Related Articles:

• Hamish Fulton: Limmat Art Walk, Zürich 2012

Out now: VernissageTV PDF-magazine No. 18, July 2011.

VernissageTV’s PDF Magazin No. 18 has its focus on the two major art events this year, the 54th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, and Art 42 Basel. Highlights of No. 18 are a personal look at five days in Venice by Miami-based artist duo Guerra de la Paz, and exclusive video and audio downloads for the readers of this issue. Then there are photo galleries showing Elmgreen & Dragset’s exhibition at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen’s Submarine Wharf in Rotterdam, and Ai Weiwei’s solo show Art / Architecture at Kunsthaus Bregenz. For design lovers, there’s a report on Matti Suuronen’s Futuro, House of the Future of the 1960s.

Artists in this issue: Ai Weiwei, Matti Suuronen, Elmgreen & Dragset, and Guerra de la Paz.

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The Kunsthaus in Bregenz / Austria explores the architectural work of Ai Weiwei with a solo show titled Art / Architecture. While not as widely presented as his artistic oeuvre, Ai Weiwei’s work in the field of architecture is extremely important for the artist because of the collaborative – that is social and political – aspect of it.

On three floors of architect Peter Zumthor’s Kunsthaus building, the exhibition focuses on Ai Weiwei’s collaborative architecture projects such as the Beijing National Stadium (colloquially as the Bird’s Nest), developed in collaboration with the Pritzker price winning architects Herzog & de Meuron, but also numerous projects with lesser known architects.

This video takes you on a walk through the exhibition. The tour begins on the first floor with architectural models, plans, photographs and video documentations of specific projects, continues on the second floor with Ordos 100 (2011), a piece specifically created for this show, and finally culminates with the most abstract work of the show, Moon Chest (2008).

VernissageTV also met with the director of the Kunsthaus Bregenz, Yilmaz Dziewior, who talks about the idea behind the show, the concept of the exhibition, the significance of Ai Weiwei’s architectural work, and the supporting program.

Ai Weiwei: Art / Architecture at Kunsthaus Bregenz. Interview with Director Yilmaz Dziewior. Opening reception, July 15, 2011.

PS: See also: Ai Weiwei: Teahouse (2009) at the Museum of Asian Art, Berlin; Ai Weiwei: Sunflower Seeds at Tate Modern Turbine Hall, London; and Acconci Studio and Ai Weiwei: A Collaborative Project / Para/Site Art Space Hong Kong.

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Chinese artist Ai Weiwei’s teahouse (Teehaus, 2009) is currently on show at the Asian Art Museum in Berlin. It consists of 378 cubes and 54 prisms of pressed Pu’er-Tea, surrounded by a field of scattered tea.

Unfortunately it’s not possible to reproduce the scent of this work via video. So if you really want to experience the work, you have to visit the exhibition at the Asian Art Museum. The presentation of the Teehaus was made possible by the permanent loan by Dieter und Si Rosenkranz.

If you like the video, we also recommend the coverage of Ai Weiwei: Sunflower Seeds at Tate Modern and Acconci Studio and Ai Weiwei: A Collaborative Project / Para/Site Art Space Hong Kong.

For more information about Ai Weiwei, please use our custom contemporary art search below.

Berlin’s Museum of East Asian Art and the Museum of Indian Art were merged in December 2006 and now operate under a new joint name, the Asian Art Museum. The Collection of South, Southeast and Central Asian Art houses one of the most important collections worldwide of art from the Indo-Asian cultural area, from the 4th millenium BC to the present.

Ai Weiwei: Teahouse (2009) at the Museum of Asian Art, Berlin. Video by Ikono.tv.

PS: This exhibition was also a great olfactoric experience (but with coffee): Not Vital: Lotus, Coffee and Stone Pine, Portraits, Snow and Boyfriend / Sperone Westwater Gallery, New York (2007).

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Ai Weiwei is one of the most popular Chinese artists of our time. For Tate Modern’s The Unilever Series he has been commissioned to produce a new work. The sculptural installation titled Sunflower Seeds looks rather minimalistic at first sight. What seems to be an ocean of sunflower seed husks, is in reality a flat landscape of over 100 million individually handmade porcelain replicas of the seed.

Visitors are invited to walk across the surface of the work. It’s a sensory and immersive installation, which visitors can touch, walk on and listen to as the seeds shift beneath their feet.

Although they look identical from a distance, every seed is different and handcrafted by skilled artisans. Sunflower Seeds is the largest work Ai Weiwei has made using porcelain, one of China’s most prized exports. Previously Ai has created imitation fruit, clothes and vases. Sunflower Seeds weighs over 150 metric tons, covering 1000 square meters of the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall.

Ai Weiwei was born in 1957 in Beijing, China, where he lives and works. He has exhibited internationally, including recent solo shows at Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, and Haus der Kunst, Munich. He has participated in the Sao Paulo Biennial, Documenta 12 in Kassel, and Tate Liverpool. Ai Weiwei also founded the design company Fake Design and co-founded the China Art Archives and Warehouse in Beijing.

The Unilever Series: Ai Weiwei is curated by Juliet Bingham, Curator, Tate Modern, supported by Kasia Redzisz, Assistant Curator, Tate Modern. The Unilever Series of annual commissions was launched in 2000 when Tate Modern opened with Louise Bourgeois’s I Do, I Undo, I Redo. Since then, the following artists have created work specifically for the Turbine Hall: Juan Munoz, Anish Kapoor, Olafur Eliasson, Bruce Nauman, Rachel Whiteread, Carsten Höller, Doris Salcedo, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, and Miroslaw Balka.

Ai Weiwei: Sunflower Seeds at Tate Modern Turbine Hall, London / UK. Press View, October 11, 2010.

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