More

We use some essential cookies to make this website work. We'd like to set other cookies to remember your settings, measure website use and inform our marketing. We also use content from other sites in our pages, and those sites may also set cookies. More information can be found in our cookies policy.

I. Pre-Primeval Fireball: What Gave Birth to the “Big Bang”?
Origins: Explorations in the Homeland, before December 1986

In the early 1980s, young people in China actively engaged in dialogue with the new influx of modern and contemporary art from around the world. I, too, was fired up with passion, but soon asked myself: Can new art be created through dialogue with Western culture, which has a vastly different background? If not, do we resort to centuries-old Chinese ink painting or socialist realism?

In 1984, I began to create works in my hometown of Quanzhou using gunpowder as a medium, in search of destruction and regeneration, as well as the rule of things reversing at their extremes. My use of gunpowder was also linked to my youthful rebellion against societal control.


#1
Cai Ruiqin (Cai Guo-Qiang’s father)
Untitled (Matchbox Drawings)
Date unknown
Ink, pen, and pencil on cardboard matchboxes
Approx. 4 x 5 cm each

This exhibition begins with small matchboxes on which my father drew landscapes. The works display his freestyle depiction of our hometown: In the finite space, he drew boundless horizons. Symbolizing what I inherited from him—including affection for our hometown, nature, and art—these works also allude to my nomadic life journey throughout which I carried with me the matchboxes to ignite in distinct cultures.

#2
Untitled
c. 1984
Oil and gunpowder on canvas
35 x 45 cm

#3
Painting Shot with Mini Rockets
1984
Gunpowder, ink, and acrylic on canvas
90 x 88 cm

These works are early experiments in which I sprayed canvases with small rockets, burning holes through the fabric. The nervousness and curiosity that result from gunpowder explosions is important to me. People often assume that I like fireworks, but I am in fact fascinated by the energy of explosions, which is pure, abstract, unexpected, and uncontrollable. It also represents my break from my father's cautious nature. The explosions I made at home frequently went out of control, burning through the canvases. My grandmother taught me that it's important not only to know how to start a fire, but also to know how to extinguish it.

#4
The Earth Is Our Common Home
1985
Oil on canvas
112 x 280 cm

My early works, such as this painting, already represented my cosmic concept of transcending national borders. As with the adjacent painting Shadow: Pray for Protection (1985–1986), it embodies themes of human civilization as well as terrestrial crises. My use of gunpowder to create thematic works subconsciously reflects my background in Chinese socialist realist art.

#5
Shadow: Pray for Protection
1985–1986
Gunpowder, ink, candle wax, and oil on canvas, mounted on wood
155 x 300 cm

Exploding gunpowder to depict the subject of atomic bombing can be seen as a perfect pairing between form and content. The “X” shaped composition of the painting denotes a stance against nuclear warfare. It can also be viewed as the shadow of an airplane in the work’s upper left corner. Within the shadows are scorched figures, while beneath the plane lies a clock frozen at the time of the bomb's detonation, hinting at the cruelest moment in the history of mankind, dropped by the plane. Above my self-portrait in the bottom right corner are green bird footprints, resembling olive branches of peace, made by letting a pigeon walk all over the painting.