Unbelievably, these are all photos taken directly within the installation room. The work utilises coloured light and mist to highlight the physical processes of human perception. Within the installation, visual details are blurred and distorted, and one focuses more on colour and the depth (or lack thereof) of ones field of vision. The installation is extremely successful in drawing attention to ones own senses and concentration, and in addition to that, being quite disorientating. Below is a video taken again directly within the installation space; I think it may highlight the extent to which it impairs vision and, by extension, perception of depth.
Moving on from this, we visited Ai Weiwei's exhibition at the Royal Academy of Art; the following image shows his sculpture, Grapes, within the exhibition space. The photo does not quite capture the symmetrical and cyclic nature of the work, but does demonstrate its balance and finely constructed composition.
The work was created from 27 Qing Dynasty stools, and was part of several works intended to deliberately subvert the original function and aesthetic that an object has; the rendering of stools into such a sculpture displays an intricately balanced and interesting product, but can no longer function as a chair. Ai has described this to be a transformation into a "useless object".
Left is an image of a famous work by Ai, named "Hanging Man", which was additionally featured within the Royal Academy of Art. A simple, linear portrait of a man is constructed out of a coat hanger; the book "Hanging Man: The Arrest of Ai Weiwei" uses it as its title and cover.
This concludes the trips to both of these exhibitions. I found them generally enriching as they both challenged the concept of "perception"; the former as a physical process, and the latter as the way one views the function of an object, and its place as art.
