The work was timed to coincide exactly with the 75th anniversary of the first controlled, self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction.
Cai Guo-Qiang
Posted inArt
Cai Guo-Qiang’s Whimsical Pedicabs Light Up Philly
Cai’s public art project Fireflies invites visitors to ride in padicabs illuminated by lanterns down the bustling Benjamin Franklin Parkway.
Posted inArt
11 Art-Related Movies and Shows to Watch on Netflix Instant
From a Tim Burton artist biopic and a documentary about a master forger to the soothing sounds and brushstrokes of Bob Ross, this handy playlist will get you through Thanksgiving and other tough times.
Posted inArt
Revitalizing a Dying Region of Rural Japan with Art
Every spring, a resurrection occurs in the Echigo-Tsumari area of Japan’s Niigata prefecture.
Posted inIn Brief
Cai Guo-Qiang Turns Tortoises into Art, Raising Animal-Rights Concerns [UPDATED]
The new Shigeru Ban–designed Aspen Art Museum will open with a 24-hour event this Saturday, but not everyone in town is happy.
Posted inArt
A Noah’s Ark of Stuffed Animals Draws Attention to Pollution
On July 17, a fishing boat traveled down China’s Huangpu River piled with 99 distressed stuffed animals. Camels, pandas, polar bears, leopards, and zebras clung helplessly to the dilapidated hull.
Posted inNews
Why a Russian Nationalist Militia Took Over an Arts Center in Ukraine
An arts nonprofit in the Ukrainian region of Donetsk has found itself, and much of its collection, at the mercy of the Russian nationalist militia of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), an unrecognized self-declared body.
Posted inArt
Fondation Cartier at 30: Universalized Eclectic Global Art in Forward Motion
PARIS — This is a vision of a universalized eclectic global art in forward motion: a relational aesthetic that seems to hover over many exhibitions in France as a great correctness that cannot be questioned, only tampered with.
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Can Lin Tianmiao Break Free of Gender?
The first survey of Chinese installation artist Lin Tianmiao at Asia Society, called Bound Unbound, could not have a more fitting title. The artist’s sartorial sculptures, grotesque bodies, and fibrous compositions illustrate an artist bound by cultural convention creating art unbound in technique and concept.
Posted inOpinion
Cai Guo-Qiang’s Explosive West Coast Debut
LOS ANGELES — We were all gathered outside the Museum of Contemporary Art’s Geffen Contemporary space near the Arts District, waiting patiently for the show to start. We’d lined up around the block, and I quietly wondered when things would get going and suddenly it seemed like a giant fireball was hurtling toward us. The whole crowd panicked, then screamed, then hooted, then cheered. Another fireball burst, and then it finished almost as quickly as it had started.
Posted inArt
Beautiful Dirt
The art in Swept Away: Dust, Ashes, and Dirt in Contemporary Art and Design at the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) has some of the best material lists I’ve ever seen: city dust and pencil on silk; soot on organic cotton canvas; dryer lint and cotton; blown glass and ash from burned books. It’s label text that borders on poetry.
Posted inOpinion
Cai Guo-Qiang Is Running on Empty
PROVIDENCE, RI — Cai Guo-Qiang’s Move Along, Nothing to See Here opened last Friday at the Cohen Gallery at Brown University in Rhode Island. The inaugural event for Brown’s “Year of China,” the exhibit includes work common to Cai’s oeuvre. The main sculptural work of the show, “Moving Along Nothing to See Here” (2006), has a title comprised of a phrase hear commonly used by policemen at a crime scene. It consists of two life-sized crocodiles, supported by wooden stills, their jaws wide open and writhing in pain.
