Cai Guo-Qiang

Cai is one of six artist-curators who made selections for Artistic License: Six Takes on the Guggenheim Collection, on view at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum from May 24, 2019 through January 12, 2020.

Unmanned Nature is an unpopulated landscape depicted on a curved drawing surrounding a reflective pool of water. It pays homage to traditional ink wash paintings; a subtitle on the signature refers to the fourteenth century ink wash painting Dwelling in the Fu-ch’un Mountains by Huang Kung-Wang (1269 – 1354). His largest drawing to date, Unmanned Nature was created for The 7th Hiroshima Art Prize: Cai Guo-Qiang (2008). Cai depicted “an overwhelming nature that has existed before the dawn of humankind and that will continue to exist after our extinction.” Day and Night, 2009

Seasons of Life is Cai’s first gunpowder work to be created using color gunpowder and canvas in almost 30 years. The installation is composed of a series of 4 canvases, each dedicated to a season: Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter. The central motif was derived from shunga, erotic illustrations from the Japanese Edo period; pairs of men and women making love surrounded by seasonal plants and birds. Spring begins with Cherry Blossoms, winter jasmine, camellia and swallows; Summer is rich with iris, lily, peony and cuckoos; Fall turns to morning glory, chrysanthemum, pampas grass and geese; culminating in Winter’s plum blossoms, polyanthus, pine, cranes and whiteeyes. the Winter panel. From Spring to Winter, the pairs undergo a transformation from youth to age. Their bodies are decorated by tattoos derived from hanafuda, or Japanese playing cards, that mirror the surrounding plants and animals; glorifying the cyclical seasons of life. Heaven Complex No. 1, No. 2, No. 3, 2017

Realized at various sites that include Nuclear Test Site, Nevada; at Michael Heizer’s Double Negative (1969–70), Mormon Mesa, Overton, Nevada; at Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty (1970) Salt Lake, Utah; and at various sites looking toward Manhattan, New York, February - April, approximately 3 seconds each. Gunpowder (10g) and cardboard tubes. Dimensions variable. [Ephemeral]

Venice’s Rent Collection Courtyard (1999, Deposito Polveri, Arsenale, Venice) earned Cai the Golden Lion award at the 48th Venice Biennale and drew international critical attention and controversy for its reinterpretation of the 1965 Social Realist sculptural group Rent Collection Courtyard, executed by sculptors from the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts. The 108 life-sized sculptures were created on-site by nine guest artisan sculptors and Long Xu Li, one of the original sculptors of the 1965 series. The figures were produced over several weeks preceding the exhibition opening, and completed during the ten days of the exhibition so that the opening audience would witness the sculptors at work. The gradual drying process of the unfired clay left the works first cracked then falling apart; the disintegration enhancing the experience of the figures who are both enacting and undergoing the violent destruction of oppression. Cai's recreation of the sculpture group was hailed as both a challenging and self-reflective examination of nationhood and as a base imitation of a highly regarded national icon. Inopportune: Stage One, 2004

Cai's curated project Cai Guo-Qiang: Peasant da Vincis is a series of exhibitions that feature the work of Chinese peasant inventors: artisanal aircraft, submarines, and robots. The product of over a decade of research, the exhibition showcases the peasants’ courage and individual creativity, by exploring their contributions to China's urbanization and modernity. In 2013, the exhibition toured throughout Brazil, showing in Brasília, São Paulo, and Rio de Janeiro; it was the most visited contemporary art exhibition by a living artist that year. In 2015, Peasant da Vincis travelled to Milan's National Museum of Science and Technology Leonardo da Vinci, home to many of Leonardo da Vinci's inventions. Its corresponding children's program Children da Vincis (in which children create their own inventions from everyday recyclable objects) was highlighted in Parasophia: Kyoto International Festival of Contemporary Culture, where a nine-story bamboo pagoda, decorated with hundreds of the children's creations, was erected inside the Kyoto Municipal Museum.

Using the blue skies of Florence as his canvas, Cai created an explosive tableau of Renaissance flowers on November 18, 2018. Inspired by Botticelli's Primavera, 50,000 custom-made fireworks released smoke to form thousands of flowers. The explosion lasted about 10 minutes on Piazzale Michelangelo overlooking the city. The spectacle introduced Cai's solo exhibition, Flora Commedia: Cai Quo-Qiang at the Uffizi.

Created for the 2017 BBC series Civilisations (a re-envisioning of the 1969 program presented by Kenneth Clark), Heaven Complex depicts an idyllic garden filled with gigantic blooms of carnations, peonies and über-pansies. The work consists of two phases: a color gunpowder ignition and a black gunpowder ignition. The first ignition created a vibrant scene that was then darkened by the second. During this second ignition, the colorful canvas was covered by a second set of canvases, to create a monochromatic abstract ”ghost” of the garden. Spirit of Painting, 2017

Cai's first major project after moving to the United States was The Century with Mushroom Clouds: Project for the 20th Century—a series of hand-held detonations executed in New York and Nevada. Cai deployed 10 grams of gunpowder in cardboard rolls to create mushroomoid smoke clouds at key points relating to the Manhattan project to re-enact and commemorate the atomic ignitions in the 20th Century. The ignitions were realized between February–April, 1996 at the Nuclear Test Site, Nevada; at Michael Heizer's Double Negative (1969–70), Mormon Mesa, Overton, Nevada; at Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty (1970) Salt Lake, Utah; and at various sites looking toward Manhattan, New York.

Head On presents a “wall in the head”—its transparency making the wall more physically felt by the viewer. The work represents “society’s tendency to search only for the obvious, missing instead what may not be immediately evident but ultimately more dangerous.”

Realized at Siwa Oasis, Egyptian Sahara desert. In collaboration with over 600 schoolchildren from 40 schools throughout the governate of Marsha Matruh, November 11–14, 2003. Silk and bamboo handmade kites and paint. Commissioned by Siwa Art Project, Egypt. Collection of the artist [Ephemeral].

Realized outside Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha, December 5, 2011, 3:00 pm, approximately 3 minutes, 8,300 smoke shells fitted with computer chips. Commissioned by Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art [Ephemeral]

Black Ceremony was a landmark daytime explosion event realized outside Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha on December 5, 2011. Using 8,300 PixelBurst  (smoke shells fitted with computer chips), Cai constructed enormous shapes in the sky – most notable a black pyramid and a seven-color rainbow. The work's theme was death; it was a spiritual funeral for those Arab people who had died far away from home. Black Ceremony was a stylistic and technical departure from Cai's previous daytime explosion events. Previous events (Black Rainbow: Explosion Project for Edinburgh and Black Rainbow: Explosion Project for Valencia (2005) and Clear Sky Black Cloud (2006)) only used black smoke and traditional detonation. Black Ceremony not only included colored smoke, but the computer chip-based shells allowed for unprecedented precision in the creation of complex shapes. Sky Ladder, 2015

Guo-Qiang purchased a former horse farm in Chester, New Jersey, in 2011 from an Olympic equestrian. The property was redesigned by architect Frank Gehry and his former student Trattie Davies. They converted the barn into a 14,000-square-foot studio, the stables into archives, and its hayloft into an exhibition space. Guo-Qiang had met Gehry in 2009 at Guo-Qiang's Guggenheim Bilbao solo show, and their friendship included a 2013 trip to Guo-Qiang's hometown of Quanzhou to propose a contemporary art museum. The two began work on Guo-Qiang's Chester property soon after he purchased it. The 9,700-square-foot house is built outward from the original, stone core structure in glass and sequoia. At Guo-Qiang's request, the titanium roofing curls at their edges, like flying carpets. The house has multiple small balconies. The artist lives in the Chester house with his wife and two daughters. He wears his hair short, like a drill sergeant.

108 life-sized sculptures created on site by Long Xu Li and nine guest artisan sculptors, 60 tons of clay, wire and wood armature. Commissioned by the 48th Venice Biennale. [Artwork Not Extant]

Executed for Cai Guo-Qiang: Hanging Out in the Museum (2009) at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Day and Night is a scroll painting that tells the story of the dancer's emotional journey from day to night. A dancer was positioned behind a screen of vertically hung paper sheets with her backlit movements projected onto the paper for Cai to sketch. Each iteration of the model's body is surrounded by a garden of plants and flowers that enhance the shape reflected in the model's movements. Scholar Wang Hui described the aim of this work as an attempt “to pin down—with the alchemy of gunpowder on paper—that eternal spiritual search of ‘asceticism and quietude’ that the movement of the human body suggests.” Here Wang Hui invokes an austerity and stillness that is not usually associated with Cai’s gunpowder work. Seasons of Life, 2015

The combined achievement of the touring retrospective exhibition I Want to Believe (2008) at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and his appointment as the Director of Visual and Special Effects for the Beijing Olympic Games placed Cai in the spotlight of critical and popular attention. This key point in Cai's career established him as a global powerhouse for artistic production. That year he was also awarded the 7th Hiroshima Art Prize. Since then his many solo exhibitions and projects include Saraab (2011, Doha), 1040M Underground (2011, Ukraine), Da Vincis do Povo (2013, Brasilia, São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro), Falling Back to Earth (2013, Brisane), The Ninth Wave (2014, Shanghai), There and Back Again (2015, Yokohama), My Stories of Painting (2016, Maastricht), The Spirit of Painting (2017, Madrid), Flora Commedia (2018, Florence) and In the Volcano (2019, Naples).

Fireworks Project for the Opening Ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, 2008

Realized in Beijing,, August 8, 2008, 8:00 pm, Fireworks. Commissioned by The International Olympic Committee and The Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad [Ephemeral]           

As Director of Visual and Special Effects for the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, Cai designed the fireworks for the Opening and Closing Ceremonies of the Olympic and Paralympic Games. These events included the iconic Five Olympic Rings, Lighting of the Olympic Cauldron and Footprints of History, in which 29 giant footprints appeared in the sky along the central axis of Beijing, to symbolize the 29 Olympiads. This portion of the event fostered an immediate controversy, as to ensure the quality of the live broadcast, pre-shot footage that had been “cleaned” using computer graphics was inserted. The opening event was broadcast to a global television audience of four billion. Black Ceremony, 2011

Head On was first realized for the Deutsche Guggenheim exhibition Cai Guo-Qiang: Head On (2006, Berlin). Head On is not only one of Cai's most recognizable artworks, it is also his most exhibited. The installation consists of 99 life-sized replicas of wolves cyclically crashing into a glass wall. The wolves are constructed from papier-mâché, plaster, fiberglass, resin, and painted hide. The height and thickness of the glass wall were copied from the measurements of the Berlin Wall. Its installation is accompanied by the video artwork Illusion II; a two-channel video installation that documents the explosion event realized for the same exhibition.

In 2005 he debuted his daytime explosion events with Black Rainbow: Explosion Project for Edinburgh and Black Rainbow: Explosion Project for Valencia (2005), for which he exploded a black smoke rainbow over each city.

Inopportune: Stage One is a monumental installation created for Cai's first major solo exhibition in the United States, Cai Guo-Qiang: Inopportune at the MASS MoCA (Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art) in 2004. Inopportune: Stage One is a series of nine white cars with sequenced multi-channel light tube that simulate the spiraling of an exploding car. Its initial installation at MASS MoCA mimicked the horizontal form of a Chinese scroll painting, but future configurations varied from vertical to circular, most iconically for the 2008 Solomon R Guggenheim Museum retrospective exhibition I Want to Believe in New York. Head On, 2004

In November 2003, Cai realized the performance event Man, Eagle and Eye in the Sky in the Siwa Oasis, Egyptian Sahara desert. In collaboration with over 600 schoolchildren from 40 schools, they painted and flew 300 silk and bamboo handmade kites shaped as men, eagles and eyes. Later that year, Cai executed a series of 12 gunpowder on paper drawings, mounted on wooden panels as screens, that played on these motifs and the theme of flying kites. These gunpowder drawings were among Cai's first representative gunpowder drawings that explored the use of light and shade through the capturing of smoke with glassine paper.

For his solo exhibition at the Shanghai Art Museum, Cai Guo-Qiang (2002), Cai created a series of 14 gunpowder drawings, Drawings for Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, that commemorated the successful explosion events by capturing key moments from the display.

Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Cityscape Fireworks, 2001

Realized at The Bund, Huangpu River, and Oriental Pearl TV tower, Shanghai, October 20, 2001, 9:00 p.m., Approximately 20 minutes Fireworks (200,000 shots of explosive). Explosion dimensions variable. Commissioned by the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation [Ephemeral]

On October 20, 2001, Cai realized the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Cityscape Fireworks for the closing ceremonies of the APEC conference. Using 200,000 fireworks, 10 barges, 18 yachts, and 23 buildings along the Bund, the 20-minute pyrotechnic performance was unprecedented in scale and spectacle, not only in China but globally.

These successes lead to greater recognition in the United States, starting with the realization of How is Your Feng Shui? Year 2000 Project for Manhattan (2000) for the 2000 Whitney Biennial in which Cai offered feng shui remedies to visitors using an interactive computer program. In 2004, Cai Guo-Qiang: Inopportune at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) in North was awarded the Best Monograph Show and Best Installation in a Museum by the United States branch of the International Association of Art Critics.

DMoCA (Dragon Museum of Contemporary Art): Everything is Museum, 2000 -

DMoCA is the first in Cai's Everything is Museum series that establishes museums in unusual or deserted places. For the first iteration, a 'dragon' kiln was relocated from Dehua, China to Niigata, Japan for the Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial 2000. For each following Triennial, Cai has invited a contemporary artist to construct an artwork using the DMoCA kiln as a site-specific inspiration: Kiki Smith, Pause (2003); Kōtarō Miyanaga, Range (2006); Jennifer Wen Ma, You Can’t always See Where You are Going, But Can You See Where You’ve Been (2009); Ann Hamilton, air for everyone (2012); Thrown Rope for Japan, Peter Hutchinson (2015); Wang Sishun, Flower of Happiness (2018).

In 1998, Cai collaborated with Issey Miyake to create Dragon: Explosion on Pleats Please Issey Miyake, realized at Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris on October 5. Cai ignited 63 garments from Issey Miyake's Pleats Please; the serpentine explosion seared abstract “dragons” into each piece. After debuting in on the catwalk, the garments exhibited at Fondation Cartier before travelling to New York and Tokyo as part of the exhibition Issey Miyake Making Things. Unmanned Nature: Project for the Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, 2008

The Century with Mushroom Clouds: Project for the 20th Century, 1996

In 1995, Cai was sponsored by a grant from the Asian Cultural Council to move to the United States, participate in a residency as part of the P.S.1 Studio Program. At P.S.1, he developed The Century with Mushroom Clouds: Project for the 20th Century (1996) and was short listed for The Hugo Boss Prize 1996 for his installation Cry Dragon/Cry Wolf: The Ark of Genghis Khan. He continued to exhibit internationally, participating in The Second and Third Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, at the Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane (1996, 1999) and winning the Golden Lion at the 48th Venice Biennale in 1999 for Venice’s Rent Collection Courtyard.

Realized at Palazzo Giustinian Lolin and Grand Canal. Installation incorporating wooden fishing boat from Quanzhou, Chinese herbs, ginseng (100 kg), utensils to prepare and drink herbal beverages, and other artworks by the artist as components. Boat: 700 x 950 x 180 cm. Commissioned by the 46th Venice Biennale, Italy, 1995. Museo Navale di Venezia (fishing boat), private collections (other components)

The artist moved from Beijing to New York in 1995, but as of 2017, continues to maintain a separate house in the former. In the mid-2010s, he made his gunpowder paintings in a Long Island fireworks factory. His Manhattan studio was renovated by Shohei Shigematsu and OMA. Guo-Qiang intends for it to eventually become a foundation with public viewing. He sought a property, unlike his prior studios, where he would both work and live with his family, fulfilling a goal to combine his personal and professional lives.

After 21 years and 4 attempts, Sky Ladder was finally realized on June 15 off Huiyu Island, Quanzhou. Cai had previously attempted the explosion event in Bath (1994), Shanghai (2001), and Los Angeles (2012). The ladder was constructed from a flexible metal base in 5 x5 meter segments covered in strings of fireworks, suspended in the air with a helium balloon. The ladder “allows [Cai] to have an eternal dialogue with the universe, so infinitely far, yet so close.”

Project to Extend the Great Wall of China by 10,000 Meters: Project for Extraterrestrials No. 10, 1993

Realized at the Gobi desert, west of the Great Wall, Jiayuguan, Gansu Province, February 27, 1993, 7:35 p.m., 15 minutes. Gunpowder (600 kg) and two fuse lines (10,000 m each). Explosion length: 10,000 m. Commissioned by P3 art and environment, Tokyo [Ephemeral]

One Cai's most seminal explosion events from his series Projects for Extraterrestrials, Project to Extend the Great Wall of China by 10,000 Meters: Project for Extraterrestrials No. 10 was realized on February 27, 1993 through the support of P3 art and environment, Tokyo. For this explosion event, Cai ran 10,000 meters of fuse into the Gobi Desert, west of the Great Wall in Jiayuguan, Gansu Province. Small charges were placed every 3 meters and larger charges (60 kg each) were placed every 1,000 meters, mimicking the placement of ancient signal towers. The explosion event is the first example of Cai's ability to inspire and organize large numbers of volunteers to realize a monumental artwork. To offset costs, he worked with a Japanese travel agency to organize a group of Japanese tourists, who paid to attend the event and, along with local volunteers, helped lay the fuse lines.

First realized at p3 art and environment, Tokyo. Seven gunpowder drawings. Gunpowder on paper, mounted on wood as folding screens. These gunpowder drawings are, from left to the right, front to the back: Fetus Movement II: Project for Extraterrestrials No. 9 (1991), Rebuilding the Berlin Wall: Project for Extraterrestrials No. 7 (1991), Inverted Pyramid on the Moon: Project for Humankind No. 3 (1991), Reviving the Ancient Signal Towers: Project for Extraterrestrials No. 8 (1990), A Certain Lunar Eclipse: Project for Humankind No. 2 (1991), The Vague Border at the Edge of Time/Space Project (1991) and Bigfoot's Footprints: Project for Extraterrestrials No. 6 (1990). Installation dimensions variable. Collection of the artist and various private and public collections

The installation, Primeval Fireball: The Project for Projects featured seven large scale gunpowder and ink on paper drawings that outlined hypothetical explosion projects. These gunpowder drawings are: Fetus Movement II: Project for Extraterrestrials No. 9 (1991), Rebuilding the Berlin Wall: Project for Extraterrestrials No. 7 (1991), Inverted Pyramid on the Moon: Project for Humankind No. 3 (1991), Reviving the Ancient Signal Towers: Project for Extraterrestrials No. 8 (1990), A Certain Lunar Eclipse: Project for Humankind No. 2 (1991), The Vague Border at the Edge of Time/Space Project (1991) and Bigfoot's Footprints: Project for Extraterrestrials No. 6 (1990). Each project proposed vast ignitions that would form colossal monuments to transcend spatial or spiritual barriers. To date, only two of the explosion projects has been realized: Fetus Movement II: Project for Extraterrestrials No. 9 (1992) and Footprints of History: Fireworks Project for the Opening Ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games (2008) was realized as part of the Beijing Olympics. Drawings on Pleats Please Garments for Issey Miyake Fashion Show, 1998.

Cai began painting in the early 1970s; his work turned away from the calligraphic and ink wash disciplines practiced by his father and towards the Western practice of oil and watercolor painting. Cai studied Scenic Design at the Shanghai Theatre Academy between 1982 and 1985. During that same time, he began to experiment with adding gunpowder into his painting compositions “seeking to use the forces of nature to reduce my own control of the canvas.” After moving to Japan in 1986, Cai spent years honing his signature use of gunpowder. Cai's first solo exhibition to gain significant global attention was Primeval Fireball (1991, P3 art and environment, Tokyo). For most audiences, it was an introduction to Cai's medium and method; an encompassing presentation of his intermingling of installation art, gunpowder drawing and conceptual performance. The exhibition was Cai's debut as a mature artist; the installation solidified his reputation as a “gunpowder artist” and laid out his conceptual focus for the next decade by kickstarting his decade-long series Projects for Extraterrestrials. Rather than literally, the term “Extraterrestrials” in this context is used as a challenge to adjust the vision of the world from a Ptolemaic fixation to an inclusive universal mentality - where humans are part of the cosmic landscape. The most notable works in this series include: 45.5 Meteorite Craters Made by Humans on Their 45.5 Hundred Million Year Old Planet: Project for Extraterrestrials No. 3 (1990), Fetus Movement II: Project for Extraterrestrials No. 9 (1992), The Horizon from the Pan-Pacific: Project for Extraterrestrials No. 14 (1994), Project to Extend the Great Wall of China by 10,000 Meters: Project for Extraterrestrials No. 10 (1993), Restrained Violence–Rainbow: Project for Extraterrestrials No. 25 (1995),  Dragon Sight Sees Vienna: Project for Extraterrestrials No. 32 (1999).

Cai Guo-Qiang (Chinese: 蔡国强 ; born 8 December 1957) is a Chinese artist who currently lives and works in New York City and New Jersey.

Cai Guo-Qiang was born in 1957 in Quanzhou, Fujian Province, China. His father, Cai Ruiqin, was a calligrapher and traditional painter who worked in a bookstore. As a result, Cai Guo-Qiang was exposed early on to Western literature as well as traditional Chinese art forms. As an adolescent, Cai witnessed the social effects of the Cultural Revolution; he grew up in a setting where explosions were common, where “gunpowder [was] used in both good ways and bad, in destruction and reconstruction”.

Dehua kiln (dated 1956) transported and reconstructed on site, 2.5 x 2.5 x 35 m. Commissioned by Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial 2000, Niigata Prefecture.

For his first participation in the 46th Venice Biennale, Cai piloted a Quanzhou fishing boat from Piazza San Marco down the Canale Grande to the pier of the Palazzo. The work commemorated the 700th anniversary of Marco Polo's return to Venice from Quanzhou: “Marco Polo brought back to the West many new and rare things and interesting stories. But he did not bring back the important spirit, the Eastern view of the cosmos and of life. By using Chinese medicine as one of the symbols of this spirit, I will bring the things that Marco Polo could not.”

Gunpowder on canvas, 300 x 1800 cm. Commissioned by Museo Nacional del Prado. Collection of the artist.