May 20, 2022
The Seventh Special Daytime Firework: Celebrating Transient Eternity, TRLab and Cai Guo-Qiang’s Genesis NFT Project
On Cailendar Day 57, the seventh special Daytime Firework was revealed to celebrate TRLab and Cai’s genesis NFT project: Transient Eternity — 101 Ignitions of Gunpowder Paintings.
On ‘Transient Eternity’
For its debut drop, TRLab partnered with the Rockbund Art Museum (RAM)’s newly developed digital platform RAM+ to invite internationally acclaimed artist Cai Guo-Qiang to create his first Non-Fungible Token (NFT) project.
The project transforms the “ignition moments”, a crucial part of Cai’s gunpowder paintings, into NFT. These moments all come from pieces Cai created during his recent undertaking Individual’s Journey Through Western Art History.
This Journey included exhibitions at the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts in Russia, the Prado Museum in Spain, the Uffizi Galleries in Italy, the National Archaeological Museum of Naples and the ruins of Pompeii in Italy, as well as the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in the U.S.
Each project engaged with the chapters of Western art history held within those institutions, and, more importantly, reflected on the dilemmas and possibilities of contemporary art.
“Transient Eternity is the existence of the explosion moment itself — not the videos or photographs with which the instant of ignition was preserved in the traditional sense, or the physical gunpowder painting that was born from the ignition…The project ruminates on the following question: Is it possible to create an art project with a more forward-looking vision, and with more compelling forms and concepts, by leveraging the qualities unique to NFT technology?” — Cai Guo-Qiang
The artwork was exclusively released through our online portal trlab.com on July 14, 2021, auctioned over a 48-hour period, and remained on display through August 14, 2021. Commissioned for RAM’s 10th anniversary, half of the auction proceeds went to support the museum’s development and digital art research programs. The other half benefitted Cai Foundation, mainly in support of the Asian Cultural Council (ACC) Cai Fellowship Program which funds young Chinese artists studying in the United States.
This auction was brought to life by crypto financial service providers Amber Group, Babel Finance, and Matrixport, and supported by Christie’s, Dragonfly Capital, and ART021 Shanghai Contemporary Art Fair.
Transient Eternity sold for 2,500,000 USD in a 48-hour online auction hosted on TRLab.com, a record number for NFTs from a non-crypto-native artist.
