Cai Guo-Qiang
dal 29/7/2005 al 25/9/2005
Segnalato da
29/7/2005
Cai Guo-Qiang
The Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh
The artist's ambitious plans for the gallery link his interest in the realm of ghosts and non-bodily forces with Edinburgh's rich history in this area. His specially-commissioned installations include a plantain grove planted in the Gallery, the trees' leaves inscribed with excerpts from Scottish and Chinese ghost stories sourced in association with acclaimed writer James Robertson. The artist will also create twelve new 'gunpowder drawings'.
The Fruitmarket Gallery’s 2005 Edinburgh Festival exhibition is the first solo presentation in the UK of work by Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang. An artist who came to international attention through a series of major projects throughout the 1990s, he is widely known for works such as ‘The Debt Collector’s Courtyard’, winner of the Golden Lion in Venice in 1999 and ‘Transient Rainbow’, a spectacular firework rainbow made for MoMA, New York in 2002.
This year the artist has been invited to curate China’s first national presentation at the Venice Biennale.
The artist’s ambitious plans for The Fruitmarket Gallery link his interest in the realm of ghosts and non-bodily forces with Edinburgh’s rich history in this area. His specially-commissioned installations include a plantain grove planted in the Gallery, the trees’ leaves inscribed with excerpts from Scottish and Chinese ghost stories sourced in association with acclaimed writer James Robertson. The trees may conjure spirits, as they are thought to do in the artist’s Chinese home town.
The artist will also create twelve new ‘gunpowder drawings’, made by drawing on specialised paper with gunpowder and setting it alight, leaving the residue as a drawing burned into the paper. These beautiful and unusually-created drawings feature portraits of historical Scottish figures with connections to the spirit world, and will be displayed below a cloud of Chinese paper ‘joss’ dolls.
Cai Guo-Qiang’s installations will be extended and enriched by collaborations across the city. At the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, gunpowder portraits will be displayed alongside portraits and death masks of notorious murderers and criminals, selected by the artist from the Gallery’s rich holdings.
Edinburgh Castle is the site for Cai Guo-Qiang’s most spectacular intervention into Edinburgh’s cultural life. The artist hopes to create a black rainbow made from custom-made black fireworks, designed to be seen in daylight, over this classic symbol of the city’s history.
Image: Black Rainbow: Explosion Project for Edinburgh (proposal) 2005
The Fruitmarket Gallery
45 Market Street, Edinburgh, EH1 1DF