The Spirit of Painting. Cai Guo-Qiang at the Prado

October 25, 2017–March 4, 2018

Museo Nacional Del Prado, Madrid

The Prado Museum announces a solo exhibition by contemporary artist Cai Guo-Qiang.  Cai Guo-Qiang at the Prado: The Spirit of Painting will be open from October 24, 2017 to March 4, 2018. This will be the second solo exhibition by a living artist since the museum’s founding in 1819, following an exhibition by the late Cy Twombly organized in 2008. The Spirit of Painting is co-curated by the museum’s director Miguel Zugaza and senior curator Alejandro Vergara.

Cai Guo-Qiang: October

September 13–November 12, 2017

Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow

The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts presented contemporary artist Cai Guo-Qiang’s first solo exhibition in Russia this September: Cai Guo-Qiang: October. A reflection on the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, the ambitious body of work originally created for the exhibition will transform the main exhibition areas of the museum. Artworks include large-scale outdoor and indoor installations, gunpowder paintings, a multi-media video installation, and small-scale sculptures and sketches.

Cai Guo-Qiang: Fireflies

September 14–October 8, 2017

Benjamin Franklin Parkway, Philadelphia

In September, the Association for Public Art (aPA) in Philadelphia presented a major new site-specific work by the internationally acclaimed artist Cai Guo-Qiang. Commissioned by aPA with Fung Collaboratives on the occasion of the centennial of the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, Cai Guo-Qiang: Fireflies invited the public to actively experience the grand boulevard as a nocturnal dreamscape conjured from the languorous movements of bobbing clusters of glowing handcrafted Chinese lanterns and groups of customized peddle vehicles.

The project traveled to the Baltimore Light City Festival, April 14—21, 2018.

Color Mushroom Cloud

December 2, 2017

Realized above the former CP-1 site, University of Chicago in commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the first controlled self-sustained nuclear chain reaction, December 2, 3:25 pm

Color comets and PixelBurst™ Aerial shells

75 meters tall

Commissioned by UChicago Arts and the Smart Museum of Art [Ephemeral]

Cai Guo-Qiang’s daytime explosion event Color Mushroom Cloud reflected on the 75th anniversary of the first controlled, self-sustained nuclear chain reaction. Organized and curated by Laura Steward, the Curator of Public Art and Director of the Open Practice Committee.