Artlog

The forthcoming retrospective of Cai Guo-Qiang organized by the Guggenheim Museum is the most comprehensive survey of the artist’s innovative body of work to date and represents the Guggenheim Museum’s first solo show devoted to a Chinese-born artist. Designed as a spectacular site-specific installation within the museum’s galleries, including Frank Lloyd Wright’s landmark rotunda, Cai Guo-Qiang: I Want to Believe will present a chronological and thematic survey that charts the artist’s creation of a distinctive visual and conceptual language across four mediums: gunpowder drawings, some as long as 100 feet; explosion events, documented by videos, photographs, and preparatory drawings; large-scale installations, including a version of Inopportune: Stage One (2004) comprised of nine exploding cars suspended in the central void of the rotunda; and social projects, wherein the artist works with local communities to create an art event or exhibition site, documented by photographs. Featuring over 80 works from the 1980s to the present√¢‚Ǩ‚Äùselected from major public and private collections in the U.S., Europe, and Asia√¢‚Ǩ‚Äùthe exhibition will illuminate Cai’s significant formal and conceptual contributions to contemporary international art practices and social activism.