Despite legal setbacks based on construction violations (see artnet News report), Colorado’s new Aspen Art Museum will open as scheduled this weekend, with Cai Guo-Qiang starting the festivities off with a bang with his pyrotechnic Black Lightning display on August 2, reports the Art Newspaper.
This is hardly Cai’s first effort in artist firework-making: he created a similar work, One Night Stand: Explosion Event, for Nuit Blanche, Paris’s all-night contemporary art festival, in 2013 (see artnet News‘s firework art roundup). This time around, however, Cai will opt for a daytime event, in which a dark bolt of lightning will suddenly appear above a nearby mountain, accompanied by a thunderous crash, only to gradually melt away into the blue sky.
The new museum building was designed by Shigeru Ban, who recently won the Pritzker Prize. Following Saturday’s members-only festivities, the museum will open to the public on August 9 with a 24-hour opening party and inaugural exhibitions that include “Cai Guo-Qiang: Moving Ghost Town” and “Shigeru Ban: Humanitarian Architecture.”