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Greeting

Co-organized by The National Art Center, Tokyo (NACT) and SAINT LAURENT, Ramble in the Cosmos—From Primeval Fireball Onward is the large-scale solo exhibition of internationally renowned contemporary artist Cai Guo-Qiang.

NACT has presented various exhibitions to promote both domestic and international contemporary art; the exhibition is curated by NACT’s Director General, Eriko Osaka. The involvement in organizing Cai Guo-Qiang’s exhibition marks the latest instance of SAINT LAURENT's ongoing mission, under the initiative of Anthony Vaccarello, to support excellence in various creative fields including visual arts, cinema, and music.

Cai Guo-Qiang (born 1957, China) moved from China to Japan in late 1986, staying for nearly nine years before his departure for the United States in 1995; during this time, he greatly developed his unique style of using gunpowder in his artworks. For decades, Cai has been fascinated by the wider universe and the unseen world, including feng shui and astrology and the ancient Eastern philosophies behind them. He also holds a long-term interest in science and technology as contemporary approaches to understanding our infinite universe, and his work is influenced by his sensitive reflections on contemporary social issues. Cai creatively uses gunpowder as his artistic medium. His large-scale gunpowder paintings, installations, and outdoor explosion events are renowned worldwide and convey a grand worldview that is both mythological and anthropological.

In 1991, Cai held a solo exhibition, Primeval Fireball: The Project for Projects, at P3 art and environment in Tokyo, which marked a milestone both in his time in Japan and across the span of his entire artistic career. The title “Primeval Fireball” represented a merging of Cai’s then-understanding of astrophysics, as well as his reflection on Laozi’s conception of the origin of the universe.
The exhibition Ramble in the Cosmos—From Primeval Fireball Onward at NACT thus posits the Primeval Fireball exhibition, held 30 years ago, as a starting point: Cai’s artistic “Big Bang.” From there, the exhibition traces the evolution of Cai's artistic practice. The entire exhibition will strike audiences as a gigantic installation, where they can experience Cai's idiosyncratic perspective and an artistic journey whose growth resembles the expansion of the universe.

We would like to express our deepest gratitude to Mr. Cai Guo-Qiang and Cai Studio for their generous cooperation in making this exhibition possible. We would also like to express our sincere thanks to the institutions that have loaned their valuable artworks to the exhibition, and to all those who have helped to make this exhibition possible.

The National Art Center, Tokyo; SAINT LAURENT