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Some photos from the Cai Guo-Qiang launch party at the Guggenheim:

One of the six Chevrolet cars suspended from the Guggenheim’s ceiling as part of Inopportune: Stage One.

A boat ride in a museum? Overhead sights during a cruise through An Arbitrary History: River include suspended bodies, live birds and snakes.

As you climb the rotunda, Cai’s work Inopportune: Stage One looks even more surreal. The wolves in the background are great too.

There’s a lot more. The exhibition runs through May 28. Definitely worth checking out.

Related:
Cai Guo-Qiang (EiNY)
Cai Guo-Qiang: I Want to Believe (Guggenheim Museum)

I’ve been wanting to experiment with video for some time but I’ve never had the time—or the skill—to film and edit a piece. Thankfully, A Brooklyn Lad is a whiz with a video camera and a great editor. So the two of us have teamed up to form Pavement Films. I am proud to present our first production.

We took to the streets of Manhattan the other week to create a video for Anorak.co.uk. Although the first section of the film plays like a campaign video for Barack Obama it’s not for want of trying to get an opposing point of view. We didn’t edit out Hillary Clinton supporters, we just couldn’t find a single one in four hours of trudging through New York.

Tonight is the launch party for the Cai Guo-Qiang retrospective at the Guggenheim, which runs through May 28. Sofie and I marked the Chinese New Year at a party in Cai Guo-Qiang’s studio the other week, where I spied this scale model showing his plans for the Guggenheim installation of Inopportune: Stage One. The work depicts a car bombing and features nine Chevrolet cars, six of which are seen flying through the air. There’s a nice video explaining more on the Guggenheim website. The video below shows another well known Cai Guo-Qiang work when it was on display at the Guggenheim’s sister museum in Berlin.

P.S. Cai Guo-Qiang, who is renowned for using gunpowder in many of his works, is in charge of the special effects for the Beijing Olympics, so expect to hear a lot more about him in the coming year.

Related:
The Pyrotechnic Imagination (New York Times Magazine)
Gunpowder Plots (The New Yorker)
Cai Guo-Qiang : I Want to Believe (Guggenheim Museum)

For the obvious explanation see Guest of a Guest.

Sofie and I went gallery hopping in Chelsea on Saturday. This was probably the best thing we saw all afternoon, the view from the tenth floor of 210 Eleventh Avenue.

Music by Daft Punk.

Related:
Daft Hands (YouTube)
Alive 2007 (Daft Punk live album)