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Odyssey and Homecoming exhibition poster by the Meridian Gate, the Palace Museum, Beijing, 2020. 
BEIJING – The Palace Museum announces Odyssey and Homecoming, Cai Guo-Qiang’s new exhibition in the Meridian Gate’s Central Tower, East Wing and West Wing Galleries, as well as the Lofty Pavilion; the first ever held by a contemporary artist. Opening December 15, 2020, this is Cai's largest exhibition of painting to date, assembling approximately 180 of his signature gunpowder paintings and other works, including the artist's first VR project. Odyssey and Homecoming will be on view until February 5, 2021.
Odyssey and Homecoming exhibition poster, the Palace Museum, Beijing, 2020.

Coinciding with the 600-year anniversary of the Forbidden City’s founding, and co-hosted by the Beijing Winter Olympics Committee and the Palace Museum, this exhibition is the culmination of Cai’s ambitious multi-year project Individual’s Journey Through Western Art History. Since 2017, Cai has collaborated with the West’s most preeminent museums, resulting in a series of exhibitions at the Prado Museum in Madrid, the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow, the Uffizi Galleries in Florence, the National Museum of Archeology in Naples, and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. Through each of these exhibitions, Cai mined art history to challenge the limitations that painting faces today. Odyssey and Homecoming represents the artist’s contemplation of this journey, as well as a return to and engagement with his original passion for painting, Chinese cultural spirit, and his eternal home in the cosmos.
Exhibition view showing selected works from Cai Guo-Qiang’s solo exhibition at the Prado Museum, 2020.
Left: Exhibition view of Odyssey and Homecoming; Right: Exhibition view showing selected works from Cai Guo-Qiang’s solo exhibitions at the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts (left) and at the National Archaeological Museum, Naples (right).
Non-Brand 非品牌 1, 2, 3, 5, 2019. Installation view in Odyssey and Homecoming, 2020.
Reflecting on his exhibition, Cai explains “visitors will see how the fusion of and dialogue between the past and present, East and West, can all coexist in an artist from China. Showing this may have some special significance in a world that is currently deglobalizing to a state of mutual isolation.” During this moment of deglobalization, the exhibition’s paintings forge a new mythology of Chinese relations with the West. The exhibition unfolds across two sections: “Odyssey,” which features paintings that engage with diverse Western art histories from the Spanish Golden Age to Soviet Realism and Cézanne’s Modernism, and “Homecoming,” which debuts new works that enfold aspects of traditional Chinese art and culture. Altogether, the exhibition works represent years of Cai’s research, exploration, and voyage. Odyssey and Homecoming colors a new global vision for the history of art and imbues painting with a reinvigorated capacity to engage with contemporary issues.
Exhibition views showing selected works from Cai Guo-Qiang’s dialogue with Paul Cézanne (1839–1906), 2020.
Exhibition view showing selected works from Cai Guo-Qiang’s solo exhibition at the Prado Museum and dialogue with the Middle Ages, 2020.
Through his trademark artistic process, Cai intricately patterns gunpowder and explodes it on canvas: a fiery event that leaves painterly residues. Rather than division and isolation, the explosion and the paintbrush coalesce in Cai’s monumental works to advance cultural exchange and shared understanding beyond nationality. Sir Simon Schama, Columbia University Professor of Art History and the exhibition’s curator says: “as its title implies, Odyssey and Homecoming is a liberating invitation to emerge from our physical and psychological confinement, and accompany Cai in his cross-cultural epic, minds and eyes wide-open to the possibility of transforming discoveries, attentive dialogues.” In a sense, the exhibition evokes and inverts the world-altering journey of Marco Polo some 700 years ago to the Yuan Dynasty’s capital Khanbaliq in what is now Beijing. Sparking imagination and curiosity between previously disconnected cultures, Polo became an emissary for Kublai Khan and one of the first to chronicle travels through the East for Westerners. In the year 2020, Odyssey and Homecoming reconstitutes Cai’s own art historical expeditions through the West for audiences in China.
Color Gunpowder Drawing for City of Flowers in the Sky, 2018. Installation view in Odyssey and Homecoming, 2020.
Flow (Cypress) and Transience II (Peony), 2019. Installation view in Odyssey and Homecoming, 2020.
Exhibition view of Odyssey and Homecoming, showing selected works from Cai Guo-Qiang’s dialogue with the Cosmos, 2020. 
Frolicking on Ice in the Galaxy and exhibition copy of Frolic on the Ice from the Palace Museum Collection. Installation view in Odyssey and Homecoming, 2020.
Wall of Early Paintings, 2020, exhibited adjacent to the list of individuals who have influenced Cai’s artistic development in his youth. Installation view in Odyssey and Homecoming, 2020. 
Additional exhibition highlights include Sleepwalking in the Forbidden City, a new three-part immersive installation group that debuts the artist’s first VR artwork. It features an alabaster model of the Forbidden City carved by craftsmen from Cai’s hometown and painted by fireworks; a gunpowder drawing created through multiple explosions using a method similar to a color-separated screen print; as well as a spectacular fireworks ceremony in Hunan Province imagined to have occurred above the Forbidden City 600 years ago, which is presented in Odyssey and Homecoming as a dreamscape via VR headset.
Sleepwalking in the Forbidden City set of works, installation view in Odyssey and Homecoming, 2020.
Still for VR work Sleepwalking in the Forbidden City, 2020. Courtesy Cai Studio
Virtual Reality in Partnership with HTC VIVE Arts
Nine documentary videos (directed by Shanshan Xia) that shed light on the stories behind Cai’s art historical dialogues are also displayed, as well as the parallel exhibition A Material Odyssey, which is curated by the Getty Conservation Institute and highlights the Getty’s groundbreaking studies on Cai’s materials and processes. To accompany the exhibition, a full-color 370+ page catalogue edited by Schama featuring essays by the artist and leading scholars will be published.
Exhibition views of A Material Odyssey, a Getty Conservation Institute research exhibition, 2020.
About the Palace Museum:
Completed in 1420, the Palace Museum was once the imperial Forbidden Palace of the Ming and Qing Dynasties. Located on the central axis of Beijing, the museum houses the largest collection of preserved ancient wooden structures in the world. The Palace Museum is responsible for the conservation and maintenance of the architectural structures and historical sites of the Forbidden Palace, as well as the collection, research, and exhibition of art and artifacts that form the foundation of classical Chinese cultures, which once formed the imperial collections of the Ming and Qing. The permanent collection currently holds over 180,000 pieces, including paintings, frescoes, prints, calligraphy, ancient texts, and stone rubbings. All are invaluable pieces of cultural heritage for all humankind.

Plan Your Visit
Online reservations are required to visit Odyssey and Homecoming. Reserve your tickets at the Palace Museum’s website (https://gugong.ktmtech.cn/).


For more information, please visit https://caiguoqiang.com/
 
Image credits:
Photo (1) by Cai Guo-Qiang, courtesy Cai Studio
Photo (2–3, 5, 7–17) by Lin Yi, courtesy Cai Studio
Photo (4) by Sijia Yang, courtesy Cai Studio
Photo (6) by Hsiu-man Lin, courtesy Cai Studio

Cai Studio

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