WHAT WE KNOW

The exhibition features 119 of Cai’s signature gunpowder paintings and other works, including his acclaimed VR work ‘Sleepwalking in the Forbidden City’. The works in the exhibition represent Cai’s research, exploration, and voyage across the globe, recreating his journey through western art history. Taking place across three floors of the new 40,000-square-metre museum space, the exhibition consists of two sections. ‘Odyssey’ features artworks from his solo exhibitions in world-renowned museums. ‘Homecoming’ debuts new works that encompass aspects of traditional Chinese art and culture as well as the cosmos. The fourth floor showcases the artist’s early works, as well as ‘A Material Odyssey’, a special exhibition curated by the Getty Conservation Institute in Los Angeles.

WHY WE LOVE IT

In many ways, the exhibition is like a retrospective. Visitors will see how Chi fuses, integrates, and reconciles the dialogue between past and present, and East and West. In addition, his signature gunpowder works are highlighted; for this show, the artist also created a site-specific, kinetic light installation, titled ‘Encounter with the Unknown’. The work presents a ‘cosmic tree’ that connects the ancient with the modern and the familiar with the foreign.