Geffen Contemporary Art Museum

Cai Guo-Qiang was born in 1957 in Quanzhou City China and now lives and works in New York.  He creates large scale drawings and explosions that he incorporates into dramatic art.  The exhibit has 3 gun powder drawings made on the site at the Geffen plus a suspended installation "Crop Circles" hanging from the ceiling in a huge room.  In addition he created a "gunpowder mural" that can be seen on the North facing exterior wall of the museum.  This mural was created during an explosive event on the evening of April 7, 2012.  The exhibit also has two rooms to view 5 videos of his work in progress including those created at the Geffen.

This is a view of the exterior explosive mural.

One of the three huge explosive paintings created at the Geffen.

A detail of the exterior mural.

The rest of the Geffen is devoted to an exhibit of art entitled

"Ends of the Earth, Land Art to 1974"

There are about 200 works by more than 100 artists from around the world.  The show traces the emergence of artistic practices in the 1960s which used earth as material, and land as medium and located works in remote sites far from familiar art contexts.  The exhibit poster writes "the exhibition provides a comprehensive overview that reveals the complexity of the movement's social and political engagement with the historical conditions of its time."

Jeanne-Claude and Christo Wrapped Coast-One Million Square Feet, 1968-96, Australia

Helen Meyer Harrison's "Hog Pasture Survival # 1, 1970-71/2012.  Bring on the hungry hogs.

Keith Arnatt's Liverpool Beach Burial, 1968