Cai Guo Qiang - Falling Back to Earth

蔡國強 -《歸去來兮》

歸去來兮一詞取自晉代陶淵明的《歸去來辭》，歸去來兮的解釋是 " 回來吧 !"

" Falling Back to Earth " is an installation involves 99 life-sized replicas of animals, water, sand and drip mechanism. It inspired by "Going Home". A poet written by Tao Yuanming, the Chinese poet of the Six Dynasties period.  

The scene references the lakes of moreton bay’s islands, which the artist visited in 2011.  All animals are lowering their heads into the crystal blue lake, they stand on powder white sand and simulate a mass drink from the oblong reservoir filled with 170 tons of water.

It illustrates ‘seemingly a peaceful gathering of predator and prey, the menagerie of heritage conveys an almost reverential solemnity, in a lyrical utopian vision loaded with uncertainty.‘ 

Nils-Udo

Born in 1937 in Bavaria, Germany.

"Being a part of nature, being embedded in it and living on it, it appeared to me that acting in compliance with the laws of nature was something self-evident and necessary for survival. To preserve the original character of nature, its unscathed condition, was like preserving the air I breathed, the basis of my existence. Any human interference could bring about nothing but destruction and extinction. Every newly detected piece of destroyed nature brought me to the verge of despair."

"By elevating the natural space to a work of art, I had opened myself to reality, to the liveliness of nature - I had overcome the gap between art and life. The roundabout way of two-dimensional abstraction in painting had been overcome. Henceforth my pictures were no longer painted, but planted, watered, mowed, or fenced. Through my plantations, I associated my existence with the cycles of nature, with the circulation of life. Henceforth my life and work proceeded under the guidance and in keeping with the rhythms of nature."

"Even though I work in parallel with nature and create my interventions with all possible caution, they will always remain a fundamental contradiction to themselves. It is this contradiction on which all my work is based. Even this work cannot avoid one fundamental disaster of our existence. It injures what it draws attention to, what it touches: the virginity of nature."

"Turning nature into art? Where is the critical dividing line between nature and art? This does not interest me. What counts for me is that my actions . . . fuse life and art into each other. Art does not interest me. My life interests me, my reaction to events that shape my existence."