If Cai Guo-Qiang’s return to China is greeted by fireworks, the irony will not be lost on on the New York-based artist. As the artistic director of visual and special effects for the Beijing Olympics, Cai has spent the past two years planning an elaborate pyrotechnic display for the opening and closing ceremonies.

The exact details are a closely guarded secret, but a look at Cai’s past work suggests that it’s sure to be a spectacle—one that will introduce the world to China’s artistic prowess and perhaps, mark an important turning point for the creative mastermind who seemingly turned his back on his home country so many years ago.

Born and raised in China’s Fujian province, Cai grew up surrounded by art—a rarity not afforded to many in his rural, impoverished town. But Cai’s father was a noted brush painter and calligrapher and instilled in his son an appreciation for the arts. The young Cai sketched on the school chalkboard in between classes and pored over books that arrived at the bookstore his father ran. He spent hours collecting wildflowers, hiking up the mountains near his home in search of inspiration away from everyday village life. Soon, the boy who loved the ocean, the port, and the boats fell in love with art as well and found his own calling to the field.

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Gunpowder, fireworks and attention-grabbing installations mark Cai Guo-Qiang as one of the world’s biggest and brightest artists.

The Chinese artist is about to show the whole world what he can do with a spectacular pyrotechnics display at the opening of the Olympic Games in Beijing.

Despite not having lived in China since 1986, Cai has been selected to be the Director of Visual and Special Effects for both the opening and closing ceremonies at the Games.

For the 51-year-old contemporary artist, whose work has previously caused controversy in China, the politics that have been swirling around the Games are secondary to the event itself.

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TAN: Do you recognise the so-called new China that everybody is taking about, where changes are taking place at such great speed?

CG-Q: This new China is not changing that fast, and it’s not that serious a problem.

TAN: You are a consummate experimentalist who has combined traditional materials and methods from the east (from the historical and living cultural traditions of both China and Japan) with strategies from western art history. How important are these Chinese traditions for you?

CG-Q: Just like western art is important to westerners, Chinese traditions are important to me. However, while they are my origins and foundation, they are not my main purpose in making contemporary art. The main purpose in making art is to have fun and to redefine the nature of objects. Where are the limits when an object becomes a work of art? Making contemporary art can throw up obstacles but it does not worry me. I am eternally optimistic;

I am Chinese.

[Image: Cai Guo-Qiang’s Inopportune: Stage One, 2004]

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Watch a video of Cai at work.

More about Cai Guo-Qiang, from CDT and the New Yorker.

© Alison Satake for China Digital Times (CDT), 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
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Cai is definitely cool, in every sense of the word. With the boom—pardon the expression—in contemporary Chinese art, he’s become a star. In November, he broke the auction record for a contemporary Chinese artist when a set of 14 of his gunpowder drawings sold at Christie’s in Hong Kong for $9.5 million. This week his first major retrospective opens at the Guggenheim Museum in New York (through May 28) and will later travel to Beijing and Bilbao. Sorry—there won’t be any live explosions. But the show demonstrates his vast ambition and inventiveness, and includes painting, drawing, video, sculpture and installation art. The pieces at the Guggenheim echo the edgy allure of his grand public works—the paradox of light and dark, playfulness and danger, timelessness and mortality. If you can’t make it to New York or Bilbao, too bad. But he’s also working on the opening and closing ceremonies for the Beijing Olympics, which will reach 4 billion people.

For more information on the images above, scroll over the “Notes” link. For more on the artist, as well as more samples of his work, check out this link to his Guggenheim exhibit and this link to a PBS resource.

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This week Mr. Cai has taken on a new challenge. He is the curator of the Biennale’s first official Chinese pavilion, sponsored in large part by the Chinese government. It is one of some 30 national pavilions in the Biennale, which opens to the public on June 12 and runs through Nov. 6. That the first thing visitors see is a call for enlightenment – the work of the Chinese artist Xu Zhen – is deliberately symbolic. “This is our exploration,” Mr. Cai said of the installation, “Virgin Garden: Emersion.” “It’s a work in progress.”

For more on “Virgin Garden: Emersion,” see Cai Guo-Qiang’s site.

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