Recent Projects

Animated cAI™ logo

Mirage: Explosion Event for the Cornerstone Ceremony of the Quanzhou Museum of Contemporary Art (QMoCA)

December 8, 2023

Over approximately 20 minutes, between the sea and the sky space that will house the future Cai Guo-Qiang-initiated, Frank Gehry-designed Quanzhou Museum of Contemporary Art (QMoCA), an artistic drone firework performance, Mirage: Explosion Event for the Cornerstone Ceremony of the Quanzhou Museum of Contemporary Art (QMoCA), unfolded magically.

Mirage marks Cai’s second explosive event in his hometown, the first being Sky Ladder in 2015. On this occasion, the performance celebrated the Pritzker Prize laureate Frank Gehry’s first architecture project in mainland China and expressed Cai’s gratitude for the nurturing he received from his homeland and culture. Mirage also inaugurated the cornerstone ceremony on December 9th. The events were principally sponsored by Mercedes-Benz.

 

 

Animated cAI™ logo

Ramble in the Cosmos—From Primeval Fireball Onward

The National Art Center, Tokyo

June 29 to August 21, 2023

Cai Guo-Qiang’s solo exhibition, co-organized by the National Art Center, Tokyo and SAINT LAURENT, to open in Tokyo.

Primeval Fireball marked a transformative departure for my vision and thinking, and its lasting effects accompany me to this present moment.” Cai Guo-Qiang

 

 

Animated cAI™ logo

cAI™: An Artificial Intelligence Project

April 25, 2023

Contemporary artist Cai Guo-Qiang’s artificial intelligence (AI) art project, cAI™ (pronounced “AI Cai”), draws from his long-established artistic philosophy and methodology to develop a custom AI program. The AI deep learns from Cai’s rich oeuvre, extensive writings, archival materials, and documentation. cAI™ also acquires knowledge in the diverse fields in which Cai has had a lifelong intellectual interest, such as cosmology and the unseen world.

cAI™ is an expansive, experimental art project, a multi-modal synthesis that grows organically alongside the course of Cai’s life and with the advancement of new technology. It is both a new work by Cai and a collaborative partner with whom he is in dialogue—a partner who has the potential to create independently in the future.

 

 

Cai Guo-Qiang + Kanon: EET

December 20, 2022

Cai Guo-Qiang announced his latest blockchain project in collaboration with Kanon, EET — a chat- and image-based blockchain oracle for communicating with the unseen world through art, powered by smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain. With EET, the artist delves deeper into his ongoing dialogue with the unseen world, furthering the creative potential of the blockchain by harnessing the constraints of smart contracts, with the goal of establishing a unique medium for connecting the seen and unseen worlds.

 

 

Tiger Year, Tiger Explosions

April 26, 2022

In 2022, the Year of the Tiger, Cai Guo-Qiang and his daughter Cai Wen-You teamed up to create a gift for an important “tiger” in their life: Cai’s wife and Wen-You’s mother Wu Hong Hong. The interactive Tiger Year, Tiger Explosions NFT, about sharing love between family members, was announced in collaboration with 721Land on Hong Hong’s birthday: April 26th.

After collectors enter their birthdays, different birthdates will trigger different dynamic visual effects of the “golden tiger,” including 9 blessings for collectors whose birth years fall on tiger years and 1 blessing for all other collectors. For collectors of this NFT who were born in a tiger year, owning this work symbolizes good fortune and the receipt of blessings. Once this Year of the Tiger is over, the golden liquid will automatically revert to an image of the golden tiger, symbolizing “the passing of bad luck.”

Collectors’ birth dates will be recorded on the blockchain in perpetuity.

Cai Guo-Qiang: Your Daytime Fireworks

April 22, 2022–June 6, 2022

As Cai Guo-Qiang’s third NFT, Your Daytime Fireworks invites NFT players to embark on a magical journey to explore and participate in Cai’s world of daytime fireworks.

Fireworks for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic Games

February 4, 2022–February 20, 2022

Commissioned by Beijing Organizing Committee for the 2022 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games [Ephemeral]

Cai Guo-Qiang: Exploding the Self

September 3, 2021

Following the success of his record-setting debut NFT drop, artist Cai Guo-Qiang is releasing a second NFT in an online sale hosted by TR Lab—a small surprise for the NFT community. The sale, which begins on September 3rd at 9 AM ET, consists of 99 editions of Exploding the Self. Each edition is priced at 999 USD, in an endeavor to make Cai’s latest work accessible to a wider audience. The proceeds from the sale will go towards the Rockbund Art Museum in support of the museum’s education programs.