mtnbikej
J-Zilla
Anybody else seen this in Austin, TX?
https://www.thecontemporaryaustin.org/exhibitions/ai-weiwei/
Forever Bicycles, 2014, located at the Waller Creek Delta, consists of over 1,200 bicycles transformed into a playful, spectacular monolith of a sculpture. In characteristic fashion, the artist decommissions and recontextualizes a functional everyday object: the bicycle. The title, Forever Bicycles, alludes to the Forever brand (Yongjiu)—a company based in Shanghai whose mass-produced bicycles flooded the streets of China during the artist’s childhood yet remained financially out of reach for many—but also suggests a globally utilitarian form of transport now disappearing as car culture becomes predominant. The conceptual premise of this series consists of several to thousands of bicycles assembled into a composition, typically with an archway underneath for viewers to pass through. The work has existed in many iterations over time, each version site-specific to its location through the number of bicycles, positioning, and formation. While static, the bicycles together become a vertiginous structure of steel, light, and shadow, rendering the “forever” in the title a metaphor for meaning beyond the brand and encapsulating the optical effect when the viewer looks up into a seemingly infinite puzzle of wheels, frames, and spokes with the sky as backdrop.
https://www.thecontemporaryaustin.org/exhibitions/ai-weiwei/
Forever Bicycles, 2014, located at the Waller Creek Delta, consists of over 1,200 bicycles transformed into a playful, spectacular monolith of a sculpture. In characteristic fashion, the artist decommissions and recontextualizes a functional everyday object: the bicycle. The title, Forever Bicycles, alludes to the Forever brand (Yongjiu)—a company based in Shanghai whose mass-produced bicycles flooded the streets of China during the artist’s childhood yet remained financially out of reach for many—but also suggests a globally utilitarian form of transport now disappearing as car culture becomes predominant. The conceptual premise of this series consists of several to thousands of bicycles assembled into a composition, typically with an archway underneath for viewers to pass through. The work has existed in many iterations over time, each version site-specific to its location through the number of bicycles, positioning, and formation. While static, the bicycles together become a vertiginous structure of steel, light, and shadow, rendering the “forever” in the title a metaphor for meaning beyond the brand and encapsulating the optical effect when the viewer looks up into a seemingly infinite puzzle of wheels, frames, and spokes with the sky as backdrop.
