Cia Guo Qiang
Cia Guo Qiang’s art forms are inherently unstable, but his art installations are consistently site-specific, with reference to the historical and social context of the performing country. His famous pieces are produced by gunpowder and explosion events, which he called as “creative destruction”, means conflicts and transformations are interdependent conditions of life and art. He also produces art works as reflection of life experience in Mao Zedong’s Red China.
Cultural Melting Bath: Project for the 20th Century, 1997
Queens Museum of Arts, New York
The installation consists of a modern bathtub surrounded by Taihushi stone and encased in a huge translucent Chinese net. The tub is filled with lukewarm water infused with Chinese herbal medicine. Viewers are encouraged to bathe together, symbolizing the cultural melting pot. It was a site-specific and theme-determined installation, in which the complicated demographic structure of the Queen’s area is set as the theme. Cai’s strategy of bringing visitors from different national, racial, and cultural background under the Chinese canopy was seen as a metaphor for social development and improvement.
Transparent Monument, 2006
The Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden,The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA
It is a site-specific installation, the rood garden offers a spectacular views of Manhattan skyline and the Central Park.
The installation is a 15 feet high and 9.5 feet wide triple-layer tempered glass sitting on a pedestal. The glass functions as both object and the frame, which frames the relationship between the city and the park, situates the audience between the civilization and the nature. Several dead birds lie on the top of the pedestal, as if they had flown into the glass and fallen. Together with three other installation at the same site, Cai was tried to address the uneasiness of our present society, particularly in the post 9/11era.
Clear Sky Black Cloud, 2006
The Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA
A actual black cloud appears over the roof garden at precisely noon everyday. Clear Sky Black Cloud is a small ephemeral sculpture, appears in a low altitude, but powerfully present. It also symbolically sets the clock for the city.
Venice Rent Collection Courtyard: 1999
Venice Biennale
The sculptures were re-creations of the socialist realist statutes that commissioned by the Communist government during Cultural Revolution, represented the “Maoist class struggle” and served as stereotypical of socialist realism. In the Venice version, clay was left unfired and gradually disintegrated to confront the process of “work -in-progress” during the 1999 Venice Biennale.
Transient rainbow: 2002
East River, MoMA QNS (Cai Guo Qian in collaboration with Grucci Inc.,)
“…every significant social occasion of any kind, good or bad—weddings, funerals, the birth of a baby, a new home—is marked by the explosion of fireworks…Fireworks are like the town crier, announcing whatever’s going on in town.” Cai Guo-Qiang
The firework involves 1 year preparation and dynamically presented for 15 seconds only, burst into explosions and cascading of colours, then dispersing into the air with a smoky absence. Rainbow signified hope and promise after storm, the artist symbolically meant to address the time of post 11 September New York as well as making the museum’s opening of a new home, with viewers from different perspectives and social interactions.
Mushroom Clouds: 1995
Various sites in US
“What’s the most representative visual sign of the 20 century? The mushroom cloud, in the 19 century, they did not exist. In the 21 century, they will no longer exist since nuclear experiments will be done with computer simulations.” Cai Guo-Qiang
The artist used a small amount of gunpowder and carried the performance at places related to conceptual image of atomic bomb itself. Experimental places including: Nevada Nuclear Test Site, Michel Heizer’s Double Negative, Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty and Manhattan. Cai thought that mushroom cloud became a increasingly conceptual threat rather than real, as a demonstration of power.
References:
Cai, Guoquiang: Transparent Monument, Cai Guo-Qiang, 2006
Where Heaven And Earth Meet: Xu Bing & Cai Guo-Qiang, Zhang Zhaohui, 2005
Cai Guo-Qiang, Thames & Hudson ltd, London, 2000
http://www.caiguoqiang.com/
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Street Market, Gage Street, Central
