Cai Guo-Qiang: first Chinese exhibition in Mexico
Not everyone can pronounce his name, but by now most people have seen Cai Guo-Qiang’s large gunpowder drawings. Guo-Qiang’s latest work is a site-specific series for the Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporaneo (MUAC) in Mexico City. “Sunshine and Solitude” marks the first solo show of a contemporary Chinese artist not only in Mexico, but in all of Latin America. The exhibition includes fourteen pieces created specially for MUAC as well as a large-scale video installation showing Guo-Qiang’s major ‘explosion events’ in the last twenty years, including a behind-the-scenes look at the creation of the pieces for MUAC.
Most of Guo-Qiang’s exhibitions, including those that I’ve seen, feature a short video documenting his highly specialized process involving a large team of assistants to help him lay down the canvas, methodically scatter or ‘draw’ with gunpowder, arrange pieces of cardboard on top, weigh it down with stones, ignite the gunpowder and watch it explode.
Many of his pieces for MUAC resemble lush, tropical landscapes (pictures below). You can make out palm trees and high mountain ranges looming over what looks like a small island village below. Or perhaps this literal interpretation is really my own imposition upon the work and not what Guo-Qiang had in mind at all. Either way, Guo-Qiang is one of very few artists who’s process is just as exhilarating as the finished work itself.
