Cai Guo-Qiang was born in 1957 in Quanzhou City, Fujian Province, China.
Trained in stage design at the Shanghai Drama Institute from 1981 to 1985 and
now accomplished in a range of media, 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. The explosion projects, exemplified in his
series Projects for Extraterrestrials, are both wildly poetic and ambitious at
their core, and aim to establish an exchange between viewers and the larger
universe around them. During his tenure in Japan, Cai quickly achieved
international prominence; his work is now widely presented around the world.
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 and gunpowder. He was selected as a
finalist for the1996 Hugo Boss Prize and won such prestigious awards as the 48th
Venice Biennale International Golden Lion Prize and 2001 CalArts/Alpert Award in
the Arts.
Among many of the artist's solo exhibitions and projects
are the notable Cai Guo-Qiang: Inopportune, Mass MoCA, North Adams, 2005; Cai
Guo-Qiang: Traveler, Freer & Sackler Gallery and Hirshhorn Museum and
Sculpture Garden, Washington DC, 2004; curating and producing BMoCA: Bunker
Museum of Contemporary Art, Kinmen, Taiwan, 2004; Light Cycle: Explosion Project
for Central Park, New York, 2003, presented by Creative Time; Ye Gong Hao Long:
Explosion Project for Tate Modern, Tate Modern, 2003;Transient Rainbow, Museum
of Modern Art, New York, 2002; Cai Guo-Qiang, Shanghai Art Museum, 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, 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, and Project to Extend the Great Wall of China by 10,000 Meters, Jiayuguan
City, China, 1993.
