Cai Guo-Qiang
Falling Back to Earth
23 November 2013–11 May 2014
Gallery of Modern Art
Stanley Place, Brisbane
Australia
Director: Chris Saines CNZM
The Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane will present Cai Guo-Qiang: Falling Back to Earth, a major exhibition by one of the world’s most significant contemporary artists, from 23 November 2013 to 11 May 2014.
For his first solo exhibition in Australia, Cai Guo-Qiang shifts his focus away from the cosmos and back to the Earth we inhabit, while maintaining his ongoing interest in the transformative forces that impact on and flow out of human life: science and faith, beauty and violence, history and current events. At the centre of the exhibition is the theme of humanity’s relationship with nature, inspired by the unique landscapes of Queensland and Chinese literati painting and poetry.
Falling Back to Earth premieres two spectacular new commissions. Heritage, 2013, which will be acquired for the Gallery’s renowned collection of contemporary Asian art, is an installation of 99 life-like replicas of animals from around the world, drinking together from a pristine lake that evokes the sand islands of Brisbane’s Moreton Bay. Eucalyptus, 2013 comprises an enormous gum tree that extends along GOMA’s central Long Gallery, in response to Cai’s encounter with the ancient Antarctic beeches of Lamington National Park in southeast Queensland.
One of Cai’s signature works, Head On, 2006, will also be included in the exhibition, showing in Australia for the first time.
Cai has previously exhibited in two of the Queensland Art Gallery’s Asia Pacific Triennial exhibitions, in 1996 (APT2) and 1999 (APT3). He was the first contemporary artist commissioned by the Gallery to produce an interactive artwork for children, as part of the inaugural Kids’ APT in 1999.
Falling Back to Earth will include an interactive exhibition and illustrated book for children, developed together with Cai, along with Tea Pavilion, a contemplative space designed by the artist, with furniture and other elements made from a reclaimed eucalyptus tree. The space will feature regular Chinese tea ceremonies along with video that will provide context for the exhibition.
The exhibition and new commissions will be fully documented in a major publication, which includes essays by exhibition curator Russell Storer, curators Suhanya Raffel and Ben Tufnell, and writer and historian Ross Gibson, along with a major text by the artist on his work with children around the world.
Cai Guo-Qiang was born in Quanzhou, China, in 1957. He lives and works in New York City.
Recent solo exhibitions have included Da Vincis do Povo, in Brasilia, São Paolo and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (2013); A Clan of Boats, Faurschou Foundation, Copenhagen (2012); Sky Ladder, Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles (2012); and Saraab, Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha, Qatar (2011). In 2008 his retrospective Cai Guo-Qiang: I Want to Believe at the Guggenheim Museum, New York, broke audience records. Cai served as Director of Visual and Special Effects for the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing and has won numerous awards, including, in 2012, the Praemium Imperiale for Painting, Japan and a Medal of Arts from the US State Department.
*Cai Guo-Qiang, Heritage, 2013. Artist’s computer rendering. Commissioned for Cai Guo-Qiang: Falling Back to Earth, 2013. Proposed for the Queensland Art Gallery Collection with funds from the Josephine Ulrick and Win Schubert Diversity Foundation through and with the assistance of the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Foundation.
