蔡国强
ЦАЙ ГО-ЦЯН

The Eagle has Arrived!

source: afmuseetno
Den kjente kinesiske kunstneren Cai Guo-Qiang er fra Fujian-provinsen sør i Kina, men har bodd og arbeidet i Shanghai og Japan før han etablerte seg i New York i 1995. En eksplosiv dynamikk kjennetegner Cai Guo-Qiangs verk, og han ble først kjent for å lage tegninger ved å antenne krutt på papir og anvende pyroteknikk i spektakulære installasjoner.

Enten han utvider den Kinesiske Mur med 10 kilometer midt i Gobi-ørkenen, avfyrer en regnbue av fyrverkeri over East River i New York, re-designer byen Mito etter prinsipper fra Feng Shui eller seiler en tradisjonell kinesisk djunke inn i Venezia, er målet å knytte individer sammen i en kjede av muligheter som forener tid og rom.

Cai Guo-Qiang vokste opp under Kulturrevolusjonen (1966-1976) i et område preget av spenningene mellom Kina og Taiwan. På grunn av oppmykningen av kulturpolitikken i Kina på 1980-tallet fikk hans generasjons kunstnere tilgang til vestlig kunsthistorie fra 1900-tallet, som inntil da hadde vært forbudt. I motsetning til propagandaen i den offisielle kunsten var disse kunstnerne kritisk innstilt til den kollektive statsideologien, politisk og sosialt engasjerte, og åpne for alle former for individuelle uttrykksmåter. Gjennom scenografi-studier i Shanghai mellom 1981-85 tok Cai Guo-Qiang til seg lærdom om teaterets manipulasjon av tid og hvordan en iscenesatt og godt planlagt handling likevel kan oppleves som spontan av publikum. Etter studiene flyttet han til Japan og tilbrakte det neste tiåret der.

Cai Guo-Qiang begynte med maleri, som han videreutviklet gjennom collage og pyroteknikk. I et av de første fyrverkeriprosjektene la han krutt langs silhuetten av sin egen skygge på papir, og tente på. Resultatet ble en dynamisk linje av brent og svidd silhuett – en spøkelsesaktig indeks – i grenseland mellom materie og ånd. Krutt har sprengkraft, og kreftene som slippes løs er både skapende og destruktive. Prinsippet bak disse verkene er altså å manipulere tilfeldigheter, og prosessen åpner for det tilfeldige og uforberedte. Ved at arbeidene ofte utspiller seg i løpet av et øyeblikk, men likevel greier å skape et varig visuelt inntrykk, blåser hver eksplosjon ut en forbindelse mellom fortid, fremtid og nåtid. Slik peker Cai Guo-Qiang på at opplevelsen av kunst skjer i interaksjonen mellom ytre stimuli og indre erkjennelse.På midten av 1990-tallet flyttet Cai Guo-Qiang til New York og begynte å produsere skulpturer og installasjoner som brer seg ut i rommet og gjerne refererer til dyr og andre organiske former. Verket Cry Dragon, Cry Wolf: The Ark of Genghis Kahn (1996) ble laget av 108 fylte saueskinn formet som en drage, og kommenterte sosiopolitiske endringer i relasjonen mellom Kina og USA, en fremtidig og en nåtidig supermakt. Kruttet kan like gjerne knyttes til militær virksomhet som spektakulær underholdning, og eksplosjoner er også metaforer for omveltninger, vold og revolusjon. I dette ligger en påminnelse om at livet kan forandres i løpet av et øyeblikk.

Det konseptuelle er konstant i Cai Guo-Qiangs verk selv om det visuelle uttrykket kommer til syne i et vidt spekter av medier. Byggesteinene i Cai Guo-Qiangs kunstnerskap er blant annet krutt, eksplosjoner, fyrverkeri, alkohol, tegninger, kinesisk medisin, Feng Shui, båter, drager, piler, kinesiske steiner, utstoppede dyr, lanterner og fargen rødt. I sin varierte praksis stiller han ofte sammen motstridende parter; det overnaturlige og det historiske, det østlige og vestlige, det religiøse og det mytologiske, uten å tilpasse seg et logisk narrativ eller tolkning. Noen verk har et kosmisk utgangspunkt, andre orienterer seg mot jorden og landskapet, og mange dreier seg om individuelle bestrebelser eller om kulturhistorie. I bunnen ligger en livslang fascinasjon for de uforutsette kreftene som påvirker den fysiske og psykiske verden.
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source: caiguoqiang

Cai Guo-Qiang was born in 1957 in Quanzhou City, Fujian Province, China. Trained in stage design at the Shanghai Theater Academy, his work has since crossed multiple mediums within art, including drawing, installation, video and performance art. While living in Japan from 1986 to 1995, he explored the properties of gunpowder in his drawings, an inquiry that eventually led to his experimentation with explosives on a massive scale and to the development of his signature explosion events. Drawing upon Eastern philosophy and contemporary social issues as a conceptual basis, these projects and events aim to establish an exchange between viewers and the larger universe around them, utilizing a site-specific approach to culture and history. He currently lives and works in New York.

Cai was awarded the Japan Cultural Design Prize in 1995 and the Golden Lion at the 48th Venice Biennale in 1999. In the following years, he has received the 7th Hiroshima Art Prize (2007), the 20th Fukuoka Asian Culture Prize (2009), and AICA’s first place for Best Project in a Public Space for Cai Guo-Qiang: Fallen Blossoms (2010). He also curated the first China Pavilion at the 51st Venice Biennale, 2005, and held the distinguished position as Director of Visual and Special Effects for the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. In 2012, Cai was honored as one of five Laureates for the prestigious Praemium Imperiale, an award that recognizes lifetime achievement in the arts in categories not covered by the Nobel Prize. Additionally, he was also among the five artists who received the first U.S. Department of State – Medal of Arts award for his outstanding commitment to international cultural exchange.

Among his many solo exhibitions and projects include Cai Guo-Qiang on the Roof: Transparent Monument, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2006 and his retrospective I Want to Believe, which opened at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York in February 2008 before traveling to the National Art Museum of China in Beijing in August 2008 and then to the Guggenheim Bilbao in March 2009. In 2011, Cai appeared in the solo exhibition Cai Guo-Qiang: Saraab at Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art in Doha, Qatar, his first ever in a Middle Eastern country.

In 2012, the artist appeared in three solo exhibitions: Cai Guo-Qiang: Sky Ladder (Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles), Cai Guo-Qiang: Spring (Zhejiang Art Museum, Hangzhou, China), and A Clan of Boats (Faurschou Foundation, Copenhagen, Denmark). His first ever solo exhibition in Brazil, Cai Guo-Qiang: Da Vincis do Povo, is currently on view in Brasilia at the Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil and Museu dos Correios. A three-city exhibition, Da Vincis do Povo will also travel to São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro in spring and fall 2013. His next exhibition, Cai Guo-Qiang: Falling Back to Earth will open November 2013 at the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art in Australia.
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source: afmuseetno
Cai Guo-Qiang is from Fujian province in southern China, but he lived and worked in Shanghai and Japan before establishing himself in New York in 1995. An explosive dynamics literally characterizes his work: he first became known for creating drawings by igniting gunpowder on paper and using pyrotechnics in spectacular installations.

Whether extending the Great Wall 10 km in the middle of the Gobi desert, exploding a rainbow of fireworks over the East River in New York, re-designing the city of Mito after the principles of Feng Shui, or sailing a traditional Chinese junk into Venice, his goal is to link individuals together in a chain of opportunities that also unite time and space.

Cai grew up during the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) in an area marked by tensions between China and Taiwan. Due to the softening of cultural policies in China in the 1980s, his generation of artists received access to Western twentieth-century art history, which until then had been prohibited. Contrary to the propaganda of the official art, these artists were critical of the collective state ideology, were politically and socially engaged, and were open to all forms of individual expression. Through set-design studies in Shanghai between 1981 and 1985, Cai gained knowledge of theater’s ability to manipulate time and space, and of how a well-planned staged act can be perceived as spontaneous by the audience. After his studies he moved to Japan and spent the next ten years there.

Cai began his career with paintings that he later developed through collage and pyrotechnics. In one of his first firework projects, he laid gunpowder along the silhouette of his shadow on paper and lit it. The result was a dynamic burned and charred silhouette – a ghostlike index, like a borderline between matter and spirit. In this way, gunpowder becomes a material whose forces are both creative and destructive. The principle behind these works is to allow for the random and unprepared. In the sense that they often take place in the blink of an eye, but still manage to create a lasting visual impression, each explosion manipulates past, present and future. The gunpowder can as easily be linked to military operations as to spectacular entertainment, and explosions are also metaphors for upheaval, violence and revolution. In this connotation there is a reminder that life can change in an instant.

In the mid-1990s Cai moved to New York and began producing sculptures and room-sized installations that often refer to animals and other organic forms. The work Cry Dragon, Cry Wolf: The Ark of Genghis Kahn (1996) was made of 108 stuffed sheepskins shaped as a dragon, and commented on socio-political changes in the relationship between China and the United States – a future and a present superpower. The conceptual is a constant factor in Cai’s works, even if his visual expressions appear in a wide range of media from alcohol, Chinese medicine, Feng Shui, boats, kites, arrows, Chinese blocks, and taxidermied animals, to lanterns and the color red. In his diverse settings he often uses conflicting dualities: the supernatural and the historical, Eastern and Western, the religious and the mythological, without succumbing to a logical narrative or obvious interpretation. Some works have a cosmic basis, others have dealt with the earth and the landscape, and many are about individual endeavor or cultural history. At the base of his work is a lifelong fascination with the unforeseen forces that affect the physical and mental world.
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source: glanceit

O artista chinês Cai Guo Quiang nasceu em Quanzhou, no sudeste da China, morou no Japão e atualmente vive em Nova York. O artista trousse grandes painéis produzidos com materiais como pólvora, aviões, naves e grandes instalações além de ter feito homenagem a artistas como Yves Klein (que “inventou o azul Klein”). Cai Guo-Qiang ganhou um Leão de Ouro na Bienal de Veneza, em 1999, além de ter desenhado os efeitos pirotécnicos das cerimônias de abertura e encerramento das Olimpíadas de Pequim, em 2008. Formado em cenografia pela Academia de Teatro de Xangai, o artista explora bastante o espaço, aproveitando-se dos artefatos tecnológicos para encorpar as ideias e levar o público ao “estado de sonho” que deseja.
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source: laboitevertefr

Cai Guo-Qiang est un artiste plasticien chinois qui a crée cette installation d’une meute de loups empaillés qui se heurte à un mur de verre.