Cai Guo Qiang – Fallen Blossoms

ClientThe Fabric Workshop and Museum, The Philadelphia Museum of Art
Date2009
Category

Multimedia Exhibition Producer /
Live Event Technical Coordinator / Lead Videographer

Exhibition and Explosion Events at The Fabric Workshop and Museum and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2009

Slides:

  • 1. Fallen Blossoms: Time Scroll explosion event
    Photo Credit: Lonnie Graham
  • 2. Fallen: Blossoms: Explosion Event
  • 3. Fallen Blossoms: Time Scroll explosion event
    Photo Credit: Carlos Avendaño

View video of Fallen Blossoms: Explosion Event
(video directed by Tyler Henry)

View video of Fallen Blossoms: Time Scroll explosion event
(video directed by Tyler Henry)

One of the artist’s signature “explosion events,” Fallen Blossoms: Explosion Project has been specifically commissioned for the exhibition and occurred at the Philadelphia Museum of Art; followed by a second explosion event at the Fabric Workshop and Museum. Inspired by the memory of Anne d’Harnoncourt (1943-2008), late director of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and her long friendship with the founder and artistic director of the Fabric Workshop and Museum, Marion Boulton Stroud,Cai Guo-Qiang: Fallen Blossoms addresses themes of memory, loss and renewal on a personal and public level. It is Cai’s first solo exhibition in Philadelphia and the first in the United States since his retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum in early 2008.

Fallen Blossoms: Explosion Project took place on Friday, December 11, 2009, starting at approximately 4:15 p.m. on the East Terrace of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and was followed by an event featuring the creation of a gunpowder drawing at the Fabric Workshop and Museum at 6 p.m. Each event was momentary. Cai Guo-Qiang: Fallen Blossomsincludes four components, distributed between the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Fabric Workshop and Museum. In addition to the explosion event on December 11, a series of four gunpowder drawings and a sculptural installation are on view inside the Museum in a presentation titled Light Passage. Two newly commissioned works, Time Flies Like a Weaving Shuttle and Time Scroll, were on display on the seventh and eighth floor of the Fabric Workshop and Museum.