Cai Guo-Qiang

Cai Guo-Qiang (born in 1957, Quanzhou City, Fujian Province) is a Chinese contemporary artist and curator.

Biography

Cai Guo-Qiang was born in 1957 in Quanzhou City, Fujian Province, China. He was trained in stage design at the Shanghai Drama Institute from 1981 to 1985. Cai's work is scholarly and often politically charged. Cai initially began working with gunpowder to foster spontaneity and confront the suppressive, controlled artistic tradition and social climate in China. While living in Japan from 1986 to 1995, Cai 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," artistically choreographed shows incorporating fireworks and other pyrotechnics.

Cai Guo-Qiang's practice draws on a wide variety of symbols, narratives, traditions and materials such as fengshui, Chinese medicine, dragons, roller coasters, computers, vending machines, wildlife, portraiture, non-Han Chinese citizens and their cultures, fireworks and gunpowder. 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."

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 has a large-scale mid-career retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, scheduled to travel to the National Art Museum of China in Beijing and the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. He also gained widespread attention for organizing a fireworks show to mark the opening of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing.

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 performance during which he had artisans recreate a famous 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." [ http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1248/is_10_88/ai_66306816 Who Owns the People's Art?, "Art in America" ] 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. [http://www.artnet.com/magazineus/reviews/davis/davis3-13-08.asp Cai Guo-Killer, "Artnet Magazine" ] . Finally, Cai's participation in the Beijing Olympics has drawn widespread controversy, as other Chinese artists such as Ai Weiwei, the co-designer of the Olympic Stadium, have pulled out as protest over the political conditions within China. [ [http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/artworld/2008/02/25/080225craw_artworld_schjeldahl?currentPage=2] Gunpowder Plots, Peter Schjeldahl ]

elected solo exhibitions and projects

* "Cai Guo-Qiang: I Want to Believe", Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 2008
* "Inopportune: Stage One" and "Illusion", Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, 2007
* "Cai Guo-Qiang on the Roof: Transparent Monument", Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2006
* curating 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; [cite web | url = http://www.grucci.com/prTornado11_8.html | title = "Tornado: Explosion: Fireworks by Grucci and Chinese Artist Cai Guo-Qiang create opening finale for the Kennedy Center of the Arts Festival of China", Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts | accessdate = 2007-04-07] 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; [cite web | url = http://home.att.net/~artarchives/guo-giang_tone.html | title = Lilian Tone, "One Year in Fifteen Seconds, Case Study: Transient Rainbow", Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2002 | accessdate = 2007-04-07]
* "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
* "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 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.

References

External links

* [http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/cai/ Biography, interviews, essays, artwork images and video clips] from PBS series "" - Season 3 (2005).
* [http://www.caiguoqiang.com/ Website with information on Cai Guo-Qiang]
* [http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/cai/index.html/Public Broadcasting System documentary on Cai Guo-Qiang]
* [http://www.tofu-magazine.net/newVersion/pages/cai_guo_qiang.html/ Traces And Other Impacts -the work of Cai Guo Qiang, tofu-magazine #3]