Chinese artist hopes paper weapons will stir peace thoughts

NY charges three over $400K Damien Hirst forgery ring

BEIJING, June 20, (Agencies): Chinese artist Li Hongbo hopes his paper sculptures of weapons — from AK-47 assault rifles to bullets and pistols — will inspire people to think about peace.

“I produced this artwork (because) after all, there is still military competition, war and fear in this world,” Li said ahead of the opening of his latest exhibit.

“I wonder if (my work) could make people ... pursue a kind of true peace, a truly beautiful world for mankind without any disputes,” he said.

“Ocean of Flowers”, which opened at the Eight One Art Museum in Beijing on Sunday, comprises nearly 2,000 brightly coloured paper sculptures that can be folded up into weapons.

“A weapon that is used to kill people becomes a toy, a flower. It is an extreme contrast,” said 56-year-old Wang Duanting.

Li, who grew up in a farming family, said he always loved the flexibility of paper, which was invented in ancient China.

Similar to the way traditional Chinese honeycomb paper lanterns are made, Li pastes narrow strips of paper together, which he then

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cuts and chisels to achieve a shape.

The paper objects can expand and contract like an accordion.

“It’s very creative and these bullets are a lot of fun. It looks like there’s elasticity in it,” said seven-year-old Hao Jiabei.

The “Ocean of Flowers” exhibit was first shown in Sydney in 2012. The Beijing edition, which runs to July 20, is the largest showcase of Li’s work in his native country.

New York prosecutors unveiled charges Monday against three men accused of manufacturing and selling $400,000 in fake Damien Hirst prints to dozens of art buyers around the world.

Vincent Lopreto, 52, appeared in court on Monday, 15 days after being released from prison for previously selling knock-off Hirst works online, prosecutors said.

Famed for his stuffed sharks, the 52-yearold Hirst has amassed a fortune as the most commercially successful member of the Young British Artist movement that dominated the British art scene in the 1990s.

Manhattan’s district attorney Cyrus Vance Rio de Janeiro’s Mayor Marcelo Crivella (third left), and graffiti artist Luna Buschinelli, 19, (center), pose for a photo in front of her giant graffiti titled ‘Contos’ or ‘Tales’ at the Rivadavia Correa municipal school, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on June 19. Buschinelli hopes to

break a Guinness World Record as the largest graffiti made by a woman. (AP) also announced grand larceny and scheme to defraud charges against Arizona’s Paul Motta, 50 and Marco Saverino, 34.

The defendants faked paperwork to deceive buyers into believing the prints were genuine, stealing $400,000 from victims in New York and as far afield as Britain, Canada, Germany, South Africa, South Korea and Taiwan, prosecutors said.

Two sales were made to an undercover investigator posing as a buyer.

Authorities confiscated tools allegedly used to create the forgeries from Lopreto’s apartment in New Orleans, Louisiana, said Vance’s office.

Hirst won the Turner Prize in 1995 and went on to attract a huge following that went well beyond the rarefied confines of conceptual art.

He figures regularly on lists of Britain’s wealthiest people, thanks partly to a 2008 auction at Sotheby’s that saw him cut out gallery middlemen to sell 223 new pieces for 111 million pounds ($141 million at current exchange rates).

Lopreto pleaded guilty in January 2014 to selling forged Hirst prints online.