The New York Times Magazine has a profile of Cai Guo Qiang, the first Chinese artist to have a solo exhibition at New York’s Guggenheim Museum (opening today). Cai is recognized for his signature pieces of artwork involving exploding gunpowder marks on rice paper. As the artist told NYT Mag:
“It is like making medicine — a little of this, a little of that, watch it and taste it a little and see how it is working. My work is like a dialogue between me and unseen powers, like alchemy.”
For the Guggenheim retrospective, the museum features Cai’s largest installation which presents nine real cars in a cinematic progression that simulates a car bombing, occupying the central atrium of the Frank Lloyd Wright rotunda.
Living in New York since 1995, Cai is returning this summer to China as the director of visual and special effects for the opening and closing ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics.
Very impressive, and I love the anarchist tinge of it all. Gunpowder as art tool. Better than using the junk in bullets and bombs, so I also see a pacifist rung on the ladder. Am a subscriber to Art Forum and an artist/electro composer myself. Congratulations my Chinese brother pal!
February 22nd, 2008 at 11:34 am