Explosion In The Sky.
It was a rainy night . . .
No. Really. It was. It was rainin' like a mofo. And the pouring started just moments before Cai Guo-Qiang's
Light Cycle went off in 2003. This Creative Time project still burns brightly in my brain. One of the things that I loved most about it was that it was so NOT what people expected. I think that people went to the event to relive some kind of 4th of July memory. Bad move.
Light Cyclewas very much about the present, about exploring the beauty of that moment. In some ways it reminded me of
Song Dong's mesmerizing exploration of the temporal in Times Square in 2005.
It would be easy to say that the weather didn't cooperate, but I'd take issue with that. I'd say that the low ceiling of the sky
added to the beauty. It contained the light in an unexpected way. That containment seemed to intensify the afterimage imprinted directly onto the back of my skull. Thank you big dark cloudy sky.
Why am I mentioning this now?
Cai Guo-Qiang has a
retrospective opening at the Gugg tomorrow, and I have a strong feeling that it just might rock. Here's
Roberta Smith's review from the Times today.
See Spencer. Yeah!
Forget all the great
top 10 lists that Creative Time projects made this year. We got a
shoutout from the ever-excitable MAO in the process of him going all appropriately apeshit about Spencer Finch and his upcoming project for Creative Time,
The River That Flows Both Ways. Notice I didn't say OVER-excitable. Chairman MAO's got mad taste so it's always an honor to get some praise from his corner.
On a related note, while poking around the Googlesphere I came across a connection that Finch has to another Creative Time alum . . . choreographer
William Forsythe! Finch did a light installation for Forsythe's
Three Atmospheric Studies in 2005.
Oh, and extra bonus points big time to those of you who got the
Burning Star Core reference in the title of this post! Plus, I love you.
Art Where I Least Expected It.
This isn't a Creative Time project, BUT it certainly was something that made me think of their motto, "Art Where You Least Expect It." I came across this handmade note in an issue of
Art In America last month. I
posted something about it on my art blog, Heart As Arena. A couple weeks later a friend of the note slipper found his way to my blog via the Creative Time blog where he saw the picture of his friend's name. That nicely drawn circle
here. The internet is too cool.