Analysing works of Cai Guo-Qiang in relation to ancient Chinese concepts

Abstract

Abstract In the 1990s, Cai Guo-Qiang uses one of the most famous Chinese inventions, gunpowder, to realize his Projects for Extraterrestrials, which claim to establish a dialogue with extraterrestrials. Behind his projects that seem to question the infinity of the sky lurks a scarred feeling that results from a historical wound that afflicted the Chinese people for two centuries. For Cai Guo-Qiang, a dialogue with the West is impossible because the two worlds are not on an equal level. In his work using gunpowder, we can notice a change from form to no-form. The moment of the explosion not only reminds us about a simple breath – the primordial breath Qi (元氣 yuanqi) – but also evokes Laozi’s famous thought: The Great Image Has No Form (大象無形 daxiang wuxing). It is through this emptiness, this simple Qi, that Cai Guo-Qiang brushes aside the asymmetric relationship between the West and the Far East. He succeeds in directing the impossible dialogue to a cosmic dimension that assures an equality in the emptiness (空 kong, 玄 xuan) of Dao. Since living and working in the United States, Cai Guo-Qiang has continued exploring this approach. Discovering the shape of the mushroom cloud allowed him to sketch the small clouds working in the register of flatness (淡 dan) that binds the polluted Qi (邪氣 xieqi) – mushroom cloud and the upright Qi (正氣 zhengqi) – the Basidiomycota mushroom. Since these disjunctions are at the same time conceived as being opposed and complementary, they become exchangeable. In the works that followed, the artist has similarly engaged with a set of reversals inspired by history, geography and world economy. By consequence, he manages to overcome the impossible dialogue with the West, when implying the use of flexibility and the resting on the strength of opposite to explore its dynamics (以柔克剛 yirou kegang). Thus, Cai Guo-Qiang’s artistic approach that fits into the international contemporary art scene indeed also follows an old trail of ancient Chinese concepts.