Ai's Porcelain Smashed at Show Opening

What's left of Ai's Porcelain Cube in Bologna, Italy

Chinese artist Ai Weiwei has purposely broken a 2,000-year-old pottery for "art", so it was quite the shock for him when one of his own works was destroyed in Bologna, Italy last Friday during the private opening of the show.

Entitled "Who am I?" shown at Palazzo Fava, Ai's Porcelain Cube was displayed, a cube made from porcelain tubes painted in a blue and white floral design.

Porcelain Cube was made in Jingdezhen

However, a 57-year-old Czech man by the name of Vaclav Pisvejc, snuck into the invite-only event and purposely toppled the porcelain structure by the dissident artist. In a surveillance video shared by Ai, Pisvejc loiters by the work before forcefully pushing the porcelain piece over, and even looks triumphant as he proudly holds a fragment before security tackle him to the ground.

Pisvejc was arrested for "destruction, dispersion, deterioration, defacement, soiling and illicit use of cultural or landscape assets".

In addition he is known to Arturo Galansino, the exhibition's curator and director general of Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi in Florence.

"Unfortunately, I know the author of this inconsiderate gesture from a series of disturbing and damaging episodes over the years involving various exhibitions and institutions in Florence."

Ai was concerned that people were injured by the incident and asked that the fragments be removed. They will be replaced with a life-sized print of the cube with an explanation of what happened to it.

Ai is familiar with breaking priceless pottery too

He said the sound of the destruction sounded like an explosion so he thought it could be a terrorist attack.

"Afterward, I felt it's a pity as the artwork had been incredibly difficult to create," he said. "Crafted using the finest blue-and-white qinghua porcelain techniques from Jingdezhen, it required numerous attempts and a lot of experiments to produce."

It took over a year to create Porcelain Cube by using a traditional kiln. "Only true connoisseurs of the Yuan and Ming dynasties' porcelain can appreciate the effort and style behind it," said Ai, adding he would not make a replacement piece, saying these sorts of incidents are "part of the reality" of a divided society.