Bang on target set by 'gunpowder artist' Cai gunpowder, artist, Bang, Cai, target

猫123

Footprints of History: Fireworks project for the Opening Ceremony of the Beijing Olympics (2008)

Cai Guoqiang, creator of the pyrotechnic spectacle at the Olympics Opening Ceremony, often impresses with his soft handshake, low voice, slow steps and easy-going demeanor.
But for years, the 51-year-old has engaged himself in the shocking and dangerous art of explosions, widely using such materials as gunpowder.

Cai Guoqiang

While busy working on fireworks for the Closing Ceremony of the Games and Paralympics events, Cai has found time to organize a retrospective show in Beijing this month.
The ongoing exhibition at the National Art Museum of China is the first of its kind in his home country for 20 years and the second leg of its international tour.
The first stop was at the Guggenheim Museum in New York and the next will be in Spain.
The exhibition vividly chronicles how Cai rose from a kid indulging in kungfu in East China's Fujian province to become an internationally renowned pyrotechnics artist.
"Apart from the usual exhibits, I have presented a detailed autobiography with my photos, documents, early works and news clippings, to help visitors understand me and my art creations," says Cai, who has lived overseas since 1986 but recently opened a studio in a Beijing hutong.
The New York exhibition, described by American media as "explosive and "gorgeous" was reportedly the most attended visual arts show in the New York Guggenheim Museum's history.
Beijing's is promising to be an equal success - thousands of viewers have flocked to it in its first week.
"The exhibition may give Beijing viewers refreshing visual experiences. Diverse in genres and materials, his works are visually exciting, thought-provoking and culturally provocative," says Fan Di'an, dean of the museum.
The exhibition features 40 works that Cai has created since the early 1980s, arranged in four categories.

Among them are his signature gunpowder drawings, explosion event series, large-scale installations and "social projects", often realized in collaboration with the public.
The centerpiece is a gunpowder drawing, 33m wide and 2m high, shown at the circular, central gallery of the museum.
Entitled Footprints of History, it depicts Cai's impressions on the Beijing Olympics, featuring landmarks like the Tian'anmen Rostrum, the Bird's Nest and the Water Cube on the axis of the Chinese capital.



The huge scroll, burned with gunpowder on Japanese hemp paper at his seaside home in Quanzhou, Fujian province, resembles a poetic and imposing Chinese ink painting.
Another eye-catching piece is a gigantic installation entitled Borrowing Your Enemy's Arrows, hanging at the entry hall of the museum.
The work comprises an excavated fishing boat from his home city, pierced with over 3,000 arrows.
The piece wittily alludes to an ancient Chinese military tale in which General Zhuge Liang, without enough arrows to launch a successful attack, prepared large boats manned with thatch figures and sent them toward the enemy before dawn.
The enemy, unable to see clearly in the dark, fired their arrows into the dummies. The boat returned, effectively stocked with the enemy's arrows the general then recycled to defeat his opponent. "Like a sailing boat, I have traveled around the globe all these years. Now I am coming back to my home country," Cai says.
"From this retrospective show, you may see my inner conflicts, my confusion and my struggle to win as an international artist The journey of life has to move on. For me, it is like a revolution."