“History,” Ai Weiwei has said, “is the missing piece of the puzzle in everything we do.” The same could be said about Ai himself, whose work as an artist, curator, editor, and architect has been a driving force behind the development of experimental Chinese art for over twenty years. Remarkably, “Fragments,” presented in Galerie Urs Meile’s new Beijing exhibition space (which Ai designed), is the artist’s first solo exhibition in China.

Ai’s art has largely been defined by his use of historically charged materials, disfigured and reconfigured to create iconoclastic sculptures and installations.