Every July for the past three years I’ve marveled over the creative genius of an artist who works in such an unusual way that it seems incredible. But having rewatched several of his videos just now, I can assure you that he does, indeed, still exist.
He’s a Chinese dynamite artist currently living and working in New Jersey and New York City where his gigantic fantasies are executed by a large staff of students. (Please note that I’m not saying dynamic, or “Dynamite!” as in “Cool Dude!” He actually uses powdered dynamite as a medium!)
Cai Guo-Qiang was born in 1957 in Quanzhou, Fujian Province, China, where his father, Cai Ruiqin, worked as a calligrapher and traditional painter in a bookstore. He exposed Cai Guo-Qiang to traditional Chinese art forms and to Western literature, so Cai’s work draws on a variety of symbols, narratives, traditions and materials including fengshui, Chinese medicine, shanshui paintings, science, flora and fauna, portraiture.
But he is best known for his fireworks, especially huge gunpowder drawings that draw on Maoist/Socialist concepts, and strongly reflect Mao Zedong‘s belief that “to destroy nothing is to create nothing.”
Cai participated in demonstrations and parades of the Cultural Revolution himself as a teenager, and often witnessed explosions as the results of both cannon blasts and celebratory fireworks. The use of gunpowder for both destruction and reconstruction had a major visual impact on his work.
But his remarkable sense of theater, teamwork and staging can be traced to his roles in two martial art films in his late teens and then to the Shanghai Theater Academy where he studied stage design.
Two of his masterpieces can be viewed in the videos links below:
In the first, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEasgshEaFY he explains his process and its evolution to an audience in the Netherlands.
The second video shows Cai working with 100 local volunteers to create his exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, beginning with a loose sketch and stencil work, then gunpowder application, and finally ending with dramatic ignition!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-QIj7E6CR8.
Do take time out to watch one or both of these clips. They’ll make your heart sing! And expand your concept of vocational options!
I the explosive energy of your site! Happy 4th of July!