Cai Guo-Qiang

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 and teenager, Cai witnessed the social effects of the Cultural Revolution first-hand, personally participating in demonstrations and parades himself. He grew up in a setting where explosions were common, whether they were the result of cannon blasts or celebratory fireworks. He also "saw gunpowder used in both good ways and bad, in destruction and reconstruction". ==Artwork==

Cai Guo-Qiang's practice draws on a variety of symbols, narratives, traditions and materials. These include fengshui, Chinese medicine, shanshui paintings, science, flora and fauna, portraiture, and fireworks. Much of his work draws on Maoist/Socialist concepts for content, especially his gunpowder drawings, which strongly reflect Mao Zedong's tenet "destroy nothing, create nothing." Cai has said: “In some sense, Mao Zedong influenced all artists from our generation with his utopian romance and sentiment." Cai was among the first artists to contribute to discussions of Chinese art as a viable intellectual narrative with its own historical context and theoretical framework.) Cai initially began working in 1995, he explored the properties of gunpowder in his drawings, an inquiry that eventually led to his experimentation with explosives on a massive scale and the development of his signature "explosion events". In 1995, he moved to New York with a grant from the New York-based Asian Cultural Council, an international organization that promotes artistic exchanges between Asian countries and the United States. In 1998, Cai worked with fashion designer Issey Miyake on a one-off collection for Miyake's Guest Artist series. For it, Cai arranged gunpowder on white garments in the form of dragons symbolizing life, and set fire to the powder to burn the images into the clothes. Miyake then had the images reproduced as fabric prints for his Pleats Please line. Inopportune installations In 2004, Cai Guo-Qiang installed Inopportune: Stage One and Inopportune: Stage Two at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA). The piece was duplicated in 2008 at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. MASS MoCA describes the installation as such: Inopportune: Stage One (2004) is also featured in the main entrance of the Seattle Art Museum. 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics Cai was commissioned by the International Olympic Committee and the Beijing Organizing Committee to produce work for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad, the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics. Cai, who served as the director of visual and special effects at the 2008 Summer Olympics, created fireworks performances for both the opening and closing ceremonies, including the controversial "Footprints of History: Fireworks Project for the Opening Ceremony." City of Flowers in the Sky As a tribute to the center of the Italian Renaissance, Cai Guo-Qiang created an explosive depiction of flowers using fireworks across the blue skies of Florence, Italy, as his canvas, on November 18, 2018. The performance art piece lasted about ten minutes on Piazzale Michelangelo overlooking the city. During the event, which was inspired by Botticelli's "Primavera," 50,000 custom-made fireworks released smoke that resembled thousands of flowers. The spectacle introduced the Cai's solo exhibition, Flora Commedia: Cai Quo-Qiang at the Uffizi. WE ARE: Explosion Event for PST ART On September 15, 2024, Cai Guo-Qiang created and choreographed a daytime fireworks event, “WE ARE: Explosion Event for PST ART,” at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum to kickoff the PST ART: Art & Science Collide festival, a five-month, multi-venue event funded by more than $20 million in gifts from the Getty Foundation. For PST (previously known as Pacific Standard Time), Cai designed “WE ARE” in collaboration with his proprietary AI model cAI™ that gathers information and data from his artworks, archives, and areas of interest. Approximately 4,000 The Ascending Dragon was part of a promotional campaign for Arc'teryx. Although organizers claimed that described the show used "used biodegradable, environmentally friendly materials" and that all stock herds had been relocated, no environmental assessment was completed prior to the event. Cai is one of the most well-known and influential Chinese contemporary artists, having represented his country at the Venice Biennale in 1999 with his project ''Venice's Rent Collection Courtyard, a time-based sculpture which he had artisans recreate the Rent Collection Courtyard,'' a work of Socialist Realist propaganda sculpture. Cai returned to Venice in 2005 to curate the Chinese pavilion. His work has also attracted controversy. ''Venice's Rent Collection Courtyard'' drew condemnation within China from the original authors of the Socialist Realist sculpture for destroying their "spiritual property." Some critics have asserted that while his work references politics and philosophy, he seems to switch positions at will and that the references seem relatively opportunistic. In response to the critical backlash against his appropriation in the "Venice Rent Collection Courtyard," Cai has said in an interview in The Brooklyn Rail: From May 2–September 25, 2010, Cai was featured in the solo exhibition Cai Guo-Qiang: Peasant Da Vincis, which presented works from peasants in China. This includes homemade airplanes, helicopters, submarines, and robots. Cai also created Odyssey, a permanent gunpowder drawing for the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston in Fall 2010. Installed as part of the museum's ongoing Portal Project and stretching across forty-two panels, it is one of his largest gunpowder drawings to date. Another solo exhibition, 'Cai Guo-Qiang – 1040M Underground, was on view at the new foundation IZOLYATSIA. Platform for Cultural Initiatives in Donetsk, Ukraine through the fall of 2011. In December 2011, Cai Guo-Qiang: Saraab opened at Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art in Doha, Qatar - the artist's largest since his 2008 retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum and his first solo exhibition ever in a Middle Eastern country. Saraab (mirage in Arabic) features more than fifty works, including seventeen newly commissioned pieces, thirty recent works and nine documentary videos. The exhibition opened on December 5th with Black Ceremony, the artist's largest ever daytime explosion event and includes several large-scale site-specific installations. In 2016, he curated What About the Art? Contemporary Art from China at Al Riwaq in Doha. In 2012, Cai’s “Mystery Circle: Explosion Event,” featured 40,000 mini rockets that blasted for approximately two minutes at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Los Angeles. Cai was highlighted in the 2018 BBC series Civilisations, episode 9, "The Vital Spark" in which he was interviewed by Simon Schama, as an artist offering inspiration for our time. During this episode, Cai demonstrates the process of gunpowder art, by creating the two new works: Heaven Complex No. 1 and No. 2 (2017). 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. ==Awards==

He was selected as a finalist for the 1996 Hugo Boss Prize and won the 48th Venice Biennale International Golden Lion Prize and 2001 CalArts/Alpert Award in the Arts. In 2008, he was subject to a large-scale mid-career retrospective, I Want To Believe, at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, which eventually traveled to the National Art Museum of China in Beijing and the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. He also gained widespread attention as the Director of Visual and Special Effects for the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. In October 2012, he was awarded the Praemium Imperiale in Tokyo as the first Chinese national Laureate. == Personal life ==

Cai moved from Beijing to New York in 1995, but as of 2017, he continues to maintain a separate house in the former. In the mid-2010s, he made his gunpowder paintings at the Fireworks by Grucci factory in Bellport, New York. His Manhattan studio was renovated by Rem Koolhaas's Office for Metropolitan Architecture. Cai intends for it to eventually become a foundation with public viewing. Unlike his prior studios, he sought a property where he would work and live with his family, fulfilling a goal to combine his personal and professional lives. Cai 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. Cai first met Gehry in 2009 at his Guggenheim Bilbao solo show, and their friendship included a 2013 trip to Cai's hometown of Quanzhou to propose a contemporary art museum. The two began work on Cai'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 Cai's request, the titanium roofing curls at their edges, like flying carpets. The house has multiple small balconies. Cai lives in the Chester house with his wife and two daughters. ==Selected solo exhibitions and projects==

• Flora Commedia: Cai Guo-Qiang at the Uffizi, City of Florence, November 2018-February 2019 • Cai Guo Qiang: A Clan of Boats, Faurschou Foundation, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2012 • Cai Guo-Qiang: Sky Ladder, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, California, 2012 • Cai Guo-Qiang: Saraab, Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha, Qatar, 2011 • Cai Guo-Qiang: Resplandor y Soledad. Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo (MUAC), Ciudad Universitaria, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). 2011 • Cai Guo-Qiang : fallen blossoms, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 2010 • Cai Guo-Qiang: Hanging Out in the Museum , Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taipei, 2009 • Cai Guo-Qiang: I Want to Believe, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York City, 2008; Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, 2009 • Inopportune: Stage One and Illusion, Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, 2007 • Cai Guo-Qiang on the Roof: Transparent Monument, Metropolitan Museum of Art Roof Garden, New York City, 2006 • Arte all'Arte, Colle di Val d'Elsa, 2005 • Curated the first China Pavilion at the 51st Venice Biennale, 2005 • Tornado: Explosion Project for the Festival of China, Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, 2005; Washington, D.C., 2005. • Cai Guo-Qiang: Inopportune, Mass MoCA, North Adams, Massachusetts, 2005 • Cai Guo-Qiang: Traveler, Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, and Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., 2004 • Organizing and curating BMoCA: Bunker Museum of Contemporary Art, Kinmen, Taiwan, 2004 • Light Cycle: Explosion Project for Central Park, New York, 2003 • Ye Gong Hao Long: Explosion Project for Tate Modern, Tate Modern, London, 2003 • Transient Rainbow, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2002; • Cai Guo-Qiang, Shanghai Art Museum, Shanghai, 2002 • APEC Cityscape Fireworks Show, Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation, Shanghai, 2001 • Cai Guo-Qiang: An Arbitrary History, Musee d'art Contemporain Lyon, France, 2001 • Cai Guo-Qiang, Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain, Paris, 2000 • Cultural Melting Bath: Projects for the 20th Century, Queens Museum of Art, Queens, New York, 1997 • Flying Dragon in the Heavens, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humblebaek, Denmark, 1997 • The Century with Mushroom Clouds: Project for the 20th Century, New York, 1996 • The Earth Has Its Black Hole Too, Hiroshima, Japan, 1994 • Project to Extend the Great Wall of China by 10,000 Meters, Jiayuguan City, China, 1993. ==Selected bibliography==

• Dana Friis-Hansen, Octavio Zaya, Serizawa Takashi, Cai Guo-Qiang, Phaidon, London, 2002. ==References==