Explosive Artist Cai Guo-Qiang on Tiger Slayings
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Explosives artist Cai Guo-Qiang’s recent installation was created in protest at the human rights abuses within China and the regime’s support for the Sudanese government. The dramatic art installation “I Want to Believe” retrospective is being displayed at the Guggenheim Museum, New York, running February through May.
Photos Sky News
The Chinese artist’s shocking speared tigers installation — of life-sized replicas — is aimed at highlighting the killing of the endangered beasts.
“Looking at the work that I’ve done, I’ve noticed things sticking into or out of objects a lot. I think this has to do with my interest in explosions, but it also has to do with the esthetics of pain.” says Cai.
“There is a very visceral response that the audience has to the work — they feel pain when they see the tigers.”
“The tigers are realistically made, but they are completely fake.”
“It’s a stage setting that you enter into.” he says. “It’s through visual impact that you translate these ideas. And it’s through visual impact that this pain is felt.”
“You can actually elicit a very direct response — a very strong response.”
Guo-Qiang continues the dramatic animal theme with his piece called Head On — an arc of 99 replicas of wolves that appear to be leaping head on into a glass wall.
Photo Sky News
Cai Guo-Qiang is one of the most prominent living Chinese artists.
Trained in theatre design, he’s best known for his firework-based installations and for drawings made using ink and gunpowder. In November, a set of 14 untitled drawings by the artist sold at Christie’s, Hong Kong, for about $19 million US — setting a new record for a Chinese contemporary artist at auction.
The Guggenheim museum installation was to coincide with the publication of a limited edition, self-combusting book — of only 9 copies — entitled Danger Book: Suicide Fireworks.
The wolves were made in China from papier-mâché, plaster, fiberglass and
painted hide. Photo Sky News
Cai is also currently serving as Artistic Director of Visual and Special Effects for the Beijing Olympics this summer alongside film-makers Steven Spielberg and Zhang Yimou who are artistic consultants. His compatriot, artist Ai Weiwei who collaborated on the design of the Olympic “bird’s nest” stadium in Beijing with Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron, has now disassociated himself from the event, referring to China’s “disgusting” political conditions.
Cai Guo-Qiang’s world renowned fireworks explosions — poetic and ambitious at their core — aim to establish an exchange between viewers and the larger universe. Cai draws on a wide variety of materials, symbols and traditions including elements of feng shui, Chinese medicine and philosophy and gunpowder, as well as images of dragons and tigers, cars and boats, mushroom clouds and I Ching.
Installation Inopportune: Stage One, is made up of 9 cars suspended from the ceiling. They’re filled with light tubes that give the impression of being frames from a film of a car exploding upwards. Photo Sky News
Born in Quanzhou City, Fujian Province, China in 1957, Cai Guo-Qiang now lives and works in New York City. He studied stage design at the Shanghai Drama Institute from 1981 to 1985 and attended the Institute for Contemporary Art: The National and International Studio Program at P.S. 1, New York.
His work is both scholarly and politically charged. Accomplished in a variety of media, Cai began using gunpowder in his work to foster spontaneity and confront the controlled artistic tradition and social climate in China.
Cai’s suspension theme continues with An Arbitrary History: The River. Photo Sky News
While living in Japan from 1986 to 1995 he explored the properties of gunpowder in his drawings, leading to the development of his signature explosion events. These projects aim to establish an exchange between viewers and the larger universe.
Cai quickly achieved international prominence during his tenure in Japan and his work was shown widely around the world.
He has reflected upon his use of explosives both as metaphor and material. “Why is it important,” he asks, “to make these violent explosions beautiful? Because the artist, like an alchemist, has the ability to transform certain energies, using poison against poison, using dirt and getting gold.”
Through years of artistic practice, Cai has formulated collaborative relationships with specialists and experts from various disciplines, including scientists, doctors, feng shui masters, designers, architects, choreographers, filmmakers and composers, such as Issey Miyake, Rafael Vinoly, Zaha Hadid, Tan Dun and Tsai Ming-liang among others.
The image of detonation permeates through Guo-Qiang’s entire body of work. This one features a Japanese fishing boat excavated from the bottom of the ocean, covered with thousands of shards of porcelain. Photo Sky News
Interview with The Art Newspaper
TAN: Your retrospective at the Guggenheim is called “I Want to Believe.” What does it refer to?
CG-Q: The title is based on my childhood curiosity. I doubted everything, but underneath I had a sort of expectation and aspiration.
TAN: Your father was a historian and landscape painter who also practiced calligraphy. Did you emulate him in your youth?
CG-Q: I was more of a rebellious type. As a teenager I was immersed in martial arts and even starred in some kung fu films. At the same time my father introduced me to 5,000 years of Chinese poetry, paintings and literature at a time when the [Communist] Party forbade it. I understood quickly the value of the underground. I was always very unwilling to align myself to any particular group.
TAN: In China you started experimenting with gunpowder in the making of art. Was this a way of expressing yourself with no fears or limits?
CG-Q: Gunpowder is a spontaneous, unpredictable and uncontrollable medium. The more you learn to control it, the more obsessed you become with the material. It is like making love with your husband or wife. The outcome is unpredictable and the same results are never guaranteed.
Furthermore, in using gunpowder I can explore all my concerns — the relation to notions of spirituality as well as an interest in spectacle and entertainment, and the transformation of certain energies, such as violent explosions into beauty and a kind of poetry.
An artist should be like an alchemist using poison against poison, which is very much a philosophy from Chinese medicine. Turning something bad into something good — countering the force. It’s the whole idea of the alchemist, using dirt, dust, and getting gold out of it. From gunpowder, from its very essence, you can see so much of the power of the universe — how we came to be. You can express these grand ideas about the cosmos.
TAN: Did using gunpowder allow you more creative freedom?
CG-Q: Initially I began working with gunpowder to foster spontaneity and confront the controlled artistic traditions and social climate in China at the time. Using gunpowder and making burn drawings were an extension of my childhood dream of being a painter.
Also from my childhood I remember the sound of fireworks going off. In my hometown, every significant social occasion of any kind, good or bad—weddings, funerals, the birth of a baby, a new home—is marked by the use of fireworks. Fireworks are like the town crier, announcing whatever’s going on. I also remember the sound of artillery fire from a nearby army base directed at Taiwan. Gunpowder in Chinese means “fire-medicine,” it’s potentially therapeutic.
TAN: Your Guggenheim exhibition will travel to Beijing to coincide with the Olympic Games, where you are in charge of visual and special effects. What themes will be presented in the opening ceremony and how do you define the role of an artist in the Olympic Games? What are your priorities?
CG-Q: It’s not an easy undertaking, but it’s absolutely necessary. The Olympics combine the entire country’s efforts, and can do a lot of previously unimaginable things. You can display your work in front of an audience of billions, but at the same time it can feel like you’re making the work for yourself.
Through this event, one can contemplate and better understand what “Chinese culture” is. One needs to think about the past, present, and future of China and its relationship with the world. You can use this platform to tackle the topics of ritual and ceremony. In brief, it can be an opportunity for self-growth.
TAN: You are a consummate experimentalist who has combined traditional materials and methods from the east (from the historical and living cultural traditions of both China and Japan) with strategies from western art history. How important are these Chinese traditions for you?
CG-Q: Just like western art is important to westerners, Chinese traditions are important to me. However, while they are my origins and foundation, they are not my main purpose in making contemporary art. The main purpose in making art is to have fun and to redefine the nature of objects. Where are the limits when an object becomes a work of art? Making contemporary art can throw up obstacles but it does not worry me. I am eternally optimistic.
TAN: Your new book is called Danger Book: Suicide Fireworks. Why?
CG-Q: It goes beyond what is traditionally regarded as a book. It’s more an art object containing drawings and gunpowder paintings. It will be on display at the Guggenheim in a special chapel. It is a book that fuses the opponents, life and death, with the ephemeral value of beauty.
TAN: But a danger to what?
CG-Q: I used gunpowder to draw pretty images of fireworks, but included in the design is the possibility of committing suicide. If the owner pulls the string that is attached to a bundle of matches, it ignites the gunpowder on the pages and explodes the book. Even if the owner does not pull the string, there will always be the potential for danger and thus he or she will always have a dangerous relationship with the book.
TAN: What was your biggest concern at the making of it?
CG-Q: I wanted to make something that was hard to possess permanently.
TAN: In your work, you deal constantly with the ephemeral. One year of work can disappear in 15 seconds. Do you ever feel frustrated by this?
CG-Q: I feel good with the volatile nature of gunpowder; I am looking for the unchanging through the always changing. Nature always changes but the fact of change—or evolution—never does.
Visit Cai Guo-Qiang’s website to learn more about this ‘explosive’ artist.
Cai Guo-Qiang
Cai Guo-Qiang Car Bombing
Black Rainbow. Explosion Project Valencia
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That is really cool looking art. I really enjoyed it, thanks. It is sad what we do to animals and maybe this will influence someone.
Cheers.
The killing of endangered beasts is a practice of a lot of people just to earn money but they don’t know how much these animals are important to our environment. They are the beauty of our environment. There should be some efforts to stop this practice.
This art is very disturbing – and that’s probably the point that Cai is trying to make.
Once upon a time, we killed for food. Not one part of the animal was wasted.
Now we kill because it makes us macho, makes us money, and makes me sick.
I certainly hope so, Bradley, if for only 1 person. Tigers are in great peril of extinction in China.
Exactly, Chris. It’s horrendous to lose these beautiful creatures mainly for the sake of their hides! Current laws against their slaughter are not always enforced very well.
Yes it is discturbing, Morgan, and yes, that’s the whole point that Cai is attempting to make. It makes me sick to my stomach as well. I wrote a post about the tiger fur trade a while back, which I will attempt to find soon and link to it here.
That’s fantastic! But I am a little bit sad when I enjoy this art.Related to the realitic…those wild animal are facing more and more threaten we human beings bring to them.
while i agree with all of you concerning your sentiments about animal cruelty, i feel that this view of cai’s work is a bit superficial. the images are being considered much too literally. only when they are activated as metaphors do they begin to reveal the various meanings embedded in this piece. the artist’s personal history and cultural identity inform how the tigers and arrows are being utilized in a metaphorical way. it is, therefore, crucial to know something about cai guo qiang, where he comes from, and where he has been to make sense of this work. it is not so much about the threat human beings bring to wildlife; rather, it is much more concerned with the threats we impose on each other.
The animals are fake, if you people know how to read you can see it says theyre made from fiber glass and paper mache. Not ACTUAL animals, its a statement of cruelty and pain its not the act itself. He even says its meant to be like a stage, a false reality. wow..