ArtLicker

Cai detonating a piece. Courtesy of Flickr user we-make-money-not-art

OK, so I have a huge crush on Art:21 right now. They have introduced me to many fascinating artists in the past few weeks (thanks to Netflix for stocking their entire series) and I want to share one of my favorites, Cai Guo-Qiang.

Cai was born in China and now lives and works in New York. His gunpowder pieces start out as drawings, which he then outlines with various types of gunpowder. There is great care taken to control the detonations. You can imagine it’s pretty tense working with such a dangerous material. In the Art:21 segment on Cai his description of the process is one of my favorite statements from an artist in the entire series:

This whole process of making drawings is very much like lovemaking. From the very beginning of laying down the paper, it’s like laying down the sheets on the bed. First you lay down the sheets and you have this idea of what you might want to do today, in form or in action, what you would like to accomplish. Then you bring in the materials, you lay them out, apply pressure here, but not too much pressure here. You know what kind of effect it might have. How much attention you should give to a certain area, how much material you should use, and how you should play off another balance are all things that you have to consider throughout.

It’s a very long process. You keep going at it and always working towards a final goal, but it’s a very prolonged process and all the time there’s this feeling that you just want it to explode, to finish. There’s continuous control of pressure, you want to set this on fire, to explode it, but yet you are afraid that maybe it’s too early, maybe it’s not the best time yet, maybe you need to work on it a little more. Excepted from the Art:21 interview

A gunpowder drawing. Courtesy of Flickr user ejbaurdo

Excuse me while I fan myself off a bit.

The final pieces look very primative to me, almost like cave paintings. There’s an organic, chaotic quality about them that suggests natural processes, even though they are created from man-made materials.

Cai also creates sculptures, usually with sharp objects sticking into or out of them. It seems he likes to evoke a sense of empathy for the objects, hoping that the viewer will identify with the pain. In one piece that I found amusing, Cai created a suspended sculpture of an airplane with sharp objects confiscated from passengers sticking out of it. Most items are nail files and the like, and were taken from people by the Sao Paolo airport security before they boarded.

Cai's airplane sculpture. Courtesy of Flickr user meltingnoise

If you want to explore Cai’s work further you should check out the Guggenheim Museum’s overview of his recent exhibit, I Want To Believe. There are plenty of goodies there, including a video of the installation and an online exhibition of much of his work.