Cai Guo-Qiang: Fallen Blossoms

PRODUCTION

High-speed film production and same-day projection installation for Cai Guo-Qiang: Fallen Blossoms. MSP captured Cai’s 60-second explosion at the Philadelphia Museum of Art on a Phantom high-speed camera, rendered the footage on site, and produced the projection installation at The Fabric Workshop and Museum, ready as visitors made their way from the event to the exhibition.

THE EXHIBITION

Fallen Blossoms: Explosion Project took place at sunset on December 11, 2009, on the East Terrace of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where a blossoming flower shaped from gunpowder fuse was ignited. Projected at a significantly slower frame rate at The Fabric Workshop and Museum, the explosion revealed its simultaneous bloom and decay, a meditation on the passage of time and the role of memory in honoring the past.

The event was inspired by the memory of Anne d’Harnoncourt (1943–2008), the late director of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and her long friendship with Marion Boulton Stroud (1939–2015), founder and artistic director of The Fabric Workshop and Museum. The exhibition addressed memory, loss, and renewal on both a personal and public level. It was Cai’s first solo exhibition in Philadelphia, and his first in the United States since his 2008 retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum.

PRESENTATIONS

Philadelphia Museum of Art, East Terrace, Dec 11, 2009 (explosion event)
The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia, Dec 11, 2009 – Mar 21, 2010 (projection installation)