Yokohama Museum of Art
Exhibition dates: July 11 to October 18, 2015

Cai Guo-Qiang: There and Back Again at the Yokohama Museum of Art
Exhibition opens July 11th, 2015
The Yokohama Museum of Art is proud to present the major solo exhibition Cai

Guo-Qiang: There and Back Again of the New York based Chinese-born artist. The
exhibition will be open from July 11 to October 18, 2015 and will include both originallycommissioned works such as Nighttime Sakura, the artist’s largest-scale gunpowder
drawing to date, as well as signature works such as Head On and Spring, Summer, Fall,Winter. This will be the artist’s first solo exhibition in Japan in the last seven years.
The exhibition title There and Back Again is derived from a famous poem by TaoYuanming(365-427) entitled “The Return” Tao Yuanming was an influential Chinese poet
who lived during the Six Dynasties period. For this exhibition, Cai chose to reference thispiece in which the poet expresses his decision to resign from his official post and returnhome to live in isolation in the countryside. As a flourishing artist who has migrated fromQuanzhou to Japan and then to New York, Cai returns to show his work in Japan, where hefirst mastered his creative technique. In There and Back Again, Cai returns to the roots of
his creative method and asks fundamental questions that have marked his own artistic
journey. The exhibition also asks the viewers to consider one artist’s tireless search for anindividual language of expression.
For this exhibition, Cai will create a new work based on his research conducted in Yokohama
and the surrounding regions. During this process, Cai has investigated the local history andsignificant cultural figures such as Okakura Tenshin. Both Okakura, a philosopher born inYokohama, and Cai have cultural affiliations with China, Japan and the United States. Thisexhibition will inspire a reflection on the artist’s own position at cultural crossroads.
Using this unique perspective, Cai will collaborate with students of various art colleges andlocal volunteers to create his largest ever gunpowder drawing, Nighttime Sakura. For thisnew drawing on Japanese paper—a medium that Cai has been experimenting with for morethan two decades—he will explore the motif of the cherry blossom and its importance inJapanese popular culture. In addition, he will create gunpowder drawings on canvas that
posit an inquiry into the different phases and cycles of life. The creative process of thesedrawings will be open to the media.
For Cai Guo-Qiang: There and Back Again, the artist will also create the collaborative
installation Japanese Vine (tentative title). He invited fine art students from the Yokohama
College of Art and Design to participate in the creation of several hundred Japanesemorning glories modeled in clay. Together they will comprise an elegant installation thatwill be suspended from the ceiling and evoke the growing tendrils of a living vine.
In addition to works made especially for this exhibition at the Yokohama Museum of Art,
several of Cai’s seminal works will also be shown. The visually staggering Head On (2006),
an installation featuring 99 wolves crashing into a glass wall, will be exhibited for the firsttime in Japan. A suite of four gunpowder drawings on porcelain, each measuring 3m long by
2.4m wide, Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter (2014) follows the cycle of the four seasons,evoking and renewing the spirit and tradition of Chinese literati ink painting. Delicatelybalancing the violent, instant impact of the gunpowder explosion and the fragility of theporcelain, Cai Guo-Qiang manages to capture the vivid tones of the four seasons withunusual nuance and sensitivity.
Cai Guo-Qiang’s work asks viewers to reflect upon the coexistence of humans and nature
within this complex society.
During the creative process of the exhibition, Cai is collaborating with Eishi Katsura Studiofrom the Graduate School of Film and New Media of Tokyo University of Arts|geidaiRAM toproduce a documentary video about both the research and the creation of the new
gunpowder works that will be exhibited alongside the artworks.
The exhibition will also mark the launch of Art Island, an online art and educational gameplatform first conceived by the artist with the support of UNESCO. Art Island (2015) istargeted for children aged 6 to 9 that Cai has initiated with the long-term goal of fostering
creativity, mutual understanding and peace in the East Asian region. The game will belaunched on the occasion of this exhibition and will be made available on tables installed in
the foyer of the exhibition galleries of Yokohama Museum of Art. Children will be able tocreate, collaborate and exchange ideas within the game’s virtual workshops. The Fireworks
Workshop and Robot Workshop in particular are based on Cai’s signature artistic approachand are inspired by his 2010-2013 travelling exhibition Cai Guo-Qiang: Peasant Vincis. As
the game continues to develop, prominent artists, designers and architects from East Asia
will be invited to create additional workshops for Art Island.
The exhibition is accompanied by a catalog, which includes images of the creation processand installation views of the exhibition as well as a Japanese version of the Ninety-nineTales: Curious Stories from My Journey through the Real and Unseen Worlds . Written byCai, these stories narrate the events surrounding his personal growth. The catalog will be onsale as of late July at the museum shop, general bookstores and online shops in Japan.

Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter (detail) , 2014

Head On, 2006
99 life-sized replicas of wolves and glass wall.
Wolves: gauze, resin, and hide
Dimensions variable
The Deutsche Bank Collection
Photograph: Jon Linkins
Courtesy: Queensland Art Gallery ‫ ׀‬Gallery of Modern Art

A Cherry Blossoms, 2015
Gunpowder on paper
Collection of the artist
Photo by Wen-You Cai,courtesy Cai Studio

Gunpowder on 240 tiles of porcelain
Suite of 4 panels, each measuring 3 metersby 2.4 meters high overall; each tile
approximately 30 x 40 cm
Collection of the artist
Commissioned by the Power Station of Art, Shanghai
Photo by Zhang Feiyu, courtesy Cai Studio

Schedule
June 20: Cai Guo-Qiang will complete the second section of Nighttime Sakura on site.
June 23-26: On each of these days, Cai Guo-Qiang will create a new gunpowder drawing oncanvas.
July 10:
13:00-14:45: Press Preview
14:00: Press conference
15:00: Opening Ceremony
15:30-18:00: Preview and reception
On July 11: The exhibition opens to the public.
10:00-12:00: Children’s workshop
15:00-16:30: Artist Talk (in Japanese only)

Other exhibitions featuring Cai Guo-Qiang in Japan beginning July 2015
During the summer of 2015, Cai Guo-Qiang’s work will be featured in three exhibitions
across Japan. Cai will participate in the Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial 2015 with anexhibition at the Satoyama Museum of Contemporary Art Kinare scheduled to open on July
26th. Before that, on July 25th, he will collaborate with local people to make gunpowder
drawings on site. On July 26th, an exhibition of Peter Hutchison’s work curated by Cai will
open at his Dragon Museum of Contemporary Art (DMOCA) in Echigo-Tsumari. Opening on
July 27th, a solo exhibition featuring a selection of small-scale gunpowder drawings will beon view at Art Front Gallery, Daikanyama, Tokyo. The opening, scheduled for 6pm, will befollowed by an artist talk at 7pm the same evening. Funds raised by the artwork sales will
be donated to a charitable cause.
This summer will be an incredibly unique season for us to experience the world of Cai
Guo-Qiang’s art and consider his return to Japan, where the artist made his debut as avisual artist.

About the artist
Cai Guo-Qiang (b. 1957, Quanzhou, Fujian Province, China).
He was trained in stage design at the Shanghai Theater Academy, and his work has sincecrossed multiple mediums within art, including drawing, installation, video andperformance. While living in Japan from 1986 to 1995, he explored the properties ofgunpowder in his drawings, an inquiry that eventually led to the development of hissignature explosion events. Cai was awarded the Golden Lion at the 48 th Venice Biennale in1999, and the 20th Fukuoka Asian Culture Prize in 2009, and the Praemium Imperiale in2012. Additionally, he was also among the five artists honored with the first U.S.
Department of State Medal of Arts award. He also served as Director of Visual and Special
Effects for the Opening and Closing Ceremonies of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing.
Among his many solo exhibitions and projects include Cai Guo-Qiang on the Roof:Transparent Monument, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2006 and his retrospective
I Want to Believe, which opened at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York in 2008.
His firstever solo exhibition in Brazil, Cai Guo-Qiang: Da Vincis do Povo, went on athree-city tour around the country in 2013. Traveling from Brasilia to São Paulo before
reaching its final destination in Rio de Janeiro, it was the most visited exhibition by a living
artist worldwide that year with over one million visitors. In October 2013, Cai created One

Night Stand (Aventure d’un Soir), an explosion event for Nuit Blanche, a citywide art andculture festival organized by the city of Paris. In August 2014, his solo exhibition Cai

Guo-Qiang: The Ninth Wave opened at the Power Station of Art in Shanghai.
His most recent exhibition Cai Guo-Qiang: Impromptu opened in December 2014 at
Fundación Proa. On January 24, 2015, he realized Life is a Milonga: Tango Fireworks forArgentina in the neighborhood of La Boca, Buenos Aires.
He currently lives and works in New York.

Cai Guo-Qiang, Vuelta de Rocha, La Boca, Buenos Aires, 2014Photo by Wen-You Cai, courtesy Cai StudioGeneral Information:Organizer: Yokohama Museum of Art, THE YOMIURI SHIMBUN
Supported by: Embassy of the People's Republic of China in Japan, The City of Yokohama,Fujian Economy and Culture Promotion Association in Japan
Special Sponsored by: Warehouse TERRADA
Sponsored by: Huawei Technologies Japan K.K., Shiseido Co., Ltd.
In Special Cooperation with: Japan Airlines
In Cooperation with: Deutsche Bank Group, Canon Marketing Japan Inc., Bridge Roots Law
Firm, Kikushima Corporation,Eishi Katsura Studio, Graduate School of Film and New
Media, Tokyo University of the Arts | geidaiRAM, Yokohama College of Art andDesign,Minatomirai Line, Yokohama Cable Vision Inc., Yokohama FM Broadcasting Co.,
Ltd., Metropolitan Expressway Co., Ltd.
Dates: July 11 (Sat.)-October 18 (Sun.), 2015
Venue: Yokohama Museum of Art, 3-4-1 Minatomirai Nishi-ku Yokohama
Opening hours: 10:00-18:00 *9/16 and 9/18 open until 20:00*Admission until 30 minutes before closing.
Closed: Thursdays
Admission: General: ¥1,500 / University/Highschool student: ¥900 / Junior high school
students: ¥600 / Children under 12 is for freeInquiries: +81-(0)45-221-0300

Media Contact:
For international press and foreign correspondents in Japan
Ritsuko MIYANO / Satoko FUJII / Chie KUBOTA
Yokohama Museum of Art, Press Officepr-yma@yaf.or.jp