What About The Art? Cai Guo-Qiang on Shifting the Focus From the Market to the Artist
Art Basel’s definitive sales report noted one of the highest reported prices saw an asking price of $15 million. Elsewhere, prints by Hank Willis Thomas (editions of three) sold for $45,000 each. It is a commonality for Billionaire collectors to spend millions across auctions and art-fairs alike, rejecting emerging and lesser-known artists in a bid for the financial security that comes with investing in big names. In an almost linear fashion, the critical reception of contemporary Chinese art has largely been grounded in narratives of Chinese history and culture. And though perhaps the anchor lies less on the weight of an individual name, the focus still sits heavily on the art market and the artworks’ socio-political context. In response to the lack of detailed consideration given to contemporary Chinese artists’ artistic value and originality, renown contemporary artist Cai Guo-Qiang confronts the contemporary art world with the question: What about the art itself? The exhibition, curated by Guo-Qiang, presents an underlying goal of bringing to prominence each individual’s pursuit of creativity and re-directing the world’s attention to art and practice. The 15 Chinese artists selected range from international artists (Xu Bing, Yang Fudong) to a 60-year-old peasant-recently-turned-artist who has never exhibited before.
Commissioned by Qatar Musuems, each artist’s works will be presented in an independent gallery space. The exhibition highlights their individual pursuit of artistic expressions, concepts, methodologies and attitudes. Their diverse bodies of work span across the media of painting, sculpture, installation, video, performance and even interactive video game design. This exhibition offers a unique perspective to the contemporary art world, shifting an emphasis from its idiomatic language of criticism, biography and context, to a focus on the artworks themselves. Mohammed Al Othman, Public and International Relations Director at Qatar Museums said:
“By bringing the works of 15 of the most significant contemporary Chinese artists to Doha, we are continuing to deliver our promise at Qatar Museums to inspire, educate and excite the local community about the role and value of contemporary art from around the world and encourage an indigenous culture of creativity, innovation and participation in Qatar.
“We hope that this exhibition helps to not only build bridges between cultures, but also show that Qatar is open to the world and promote improved intercultural dialogue and mutual understanding between the two historic cultures of China and Qatar.”
As a testament to returning to the art, Cai Guo-Qiang shared an insight to his own craft.
Luciana Garbarni : You have achieved a great deal for the arts in bringing two otherwise distant cultures together (East and West) How does your personal history work its way into your craft?
Cai Guo-Qiang: I was born in Quanzhou, one of the most ancient and important port cities in China. In Yuan Dynasty, it was from Quanzhou that Marco Polo boarded his ship home to Venice. The city is known for its openness, as well as religion and cultural diversity, often referred to as a “museum of world religions.” Geographically distant from Beijing, the political center, Quanzhou also provided me with a relatively free cultural environment growing up. Additionally, in my family, people of many generations have lived and worked overseas in South and Southeast Asia; a lot of them settled abroad. All of these external circumstances influenced me from an early age, enabling me to navigate between cultures with great ease and connect with people with different backgrounds and life stories. Later, I moved to Japan and then to the United States, all the while traveling to create art together with people of different ethnicities of the five continents of the world. Like a seed sown in different lands, each time I discover and develop a different aspect of my craft within a different cultural context.
LG: Your work has traveled in and around extensive parts of Europe and Asia, reaching an impressively diverse number of audiences. How do the many cultures of these cities influence your art?
CGQ: After I moved from China to Japan in 1987, I noticed that ironically, the ancient Chinese cultural tradition was better preserved and celebrated over there. While in Japan, my art embraced their sensitivity to form and materiality, as well as their pursuit of the sublime. My work at the time kept a poetic distance from sociopolitical issues. The Japanese culture, its hardworking ethics and meticulous attention to detail, had a big influence on me. It was at the same time that I started to explore themes of man and nature, and of man and the universe, through creating gunpowder drawings and outdoor explosion events, the Projects for Extraterrestrials. Last year, I returned to Japan to create solo exhibition titled Cai Guo-Qiang: There and Back Again at the Yokohama Museum of Art. This return has allowed me to re-examine materiality with great attention; I started experimenting color gunpowder painting on canvas. On the other hand, my relocation from Japan to the U.S. in 1995 opened my work to a global perspective, charging it with political energy and attitude, and shifting it from a poetic approach to a more direct and bold visual presentation. The culture here is not so much about subtlety! Subsequently, I created the series The Century with Mushroom Clouds: Project for the 20th Century, and works such as Cry Dragon/Cry Wolf: The Ark of Genghis Khan, which was exhibited at the Guggenheim Museum in the inaugural Hugo Boss Prize exhibition in 1996.
L.G: Tell me a little about your fascination with explosives and how they work their way into your aesthetic.
CGQ: Fireworks and gunpowder always have a social function, including its use in warfare and in ceremonies. I didn’t have in mind all that much when I first started using gunpowder in China in 1984. I was just trying to challenge the very timid and overly cautious persona of mine as a young artist, as well as the lack of vigorous touch in my creative works. Back then, I broke firecrackers, and used the gunpowder from inside on canvas, which sometimes I first painted with oil paint. I also shot mini-rockets, a common type of toy fireworks, onto canvas. In the middle of doing all of these experiments, I expressed my fight against the oppressive social climate and relatively closed environment at the time. Of course my efforts were also focused on finding my own signature move in the world of contemporary art.
After I arrived in Japan, I pursued the materiality and expressions of gunpowder more purely, and started experimenting with a variety of gunpowder and firework products that were available. It was also in Japan, since 1989, that I started conducting outdoor explosion events. These large-scale explosion events, which I am still exploring today, led me to the international art world.
L.G: You’ve often made reference to the “inner child” that lies within each of us, as well us your own tendencies to view the world through the eyes of a child - yet some of your works draw significant attention to the more mature issues at hand in society. How do you strike a balance between the two?
CGQ: Here I want to return to a basic question of how we understand the universe. Great minds like Einstein, although amongst the most intelligent of us humankind, their scientific explorations are constantly driven by an innate, childlike curiosity for the world. The recent endeavor send a probe to Alpha Centauri, for example, when asked why spending 100 million dollars on a probe, the answer was: to see what’s out there. This is not unlike the curiosity we had at the age of discovery, when the explorers gazed at the horizon over the sea. Since then, we have traveled to the moon and beyond.
As a lot of us grow up, we become tied down by various practical goals and ambition, and we forget the initial drive, which is often a childlike wonder. To me, whether I inquire about sociopolitical issues or other subjects, I inquire it with a basic instinct of an “inner child,” including a sense of humor and playfulness. Sociopolitical issues change over time like tides coming and going, but ultimately we only have a finite life that is our own, that we can hold on to. By being true to ourselves and our childlike nature, we can ride above the changing external circumstances without being bound by them.
LG: In a recent project, Sky Ladder saw a fused ladder launched 500 meters above Huiyu Island that you quoted as being a ‘stairway to heaven.’ Can you tell me a little about the significance behind your use of fire/light as the key element to portraying this concept?
To create Sky Ladder, we developed a type of fireworks that sprayed golden flames for a total duration of 80 seconds. So a ladder measuring 500m long and 5.5m wide was lined with several thousands of these individual fireworks along with gunpowder fuse, and was lifted by a gigantic white balloon filled with 6200 cubic meters of helium and with a 5ton pulling force. After ignition, the flames hissed and violently, rushing upwards as the golden ladder of fireworks rose steeply from the ground to the sky. The explosion lasted a total of 150 seconds.
Light has a significant position in these large-scale explosion events that I have been creating since the 80s. The significance resides in the fact that light that we create on earth doesn’t disappear; it lives on and on in the universe and does not disappear. We see it in transient moments only because we move too slow and cannot travel alongside of light. Light then journeys on into the vast space and continues to live as a message.
Cai Guo-Qiang has devoted three years to the curatorial research and development of the exhibition. Included in the exhibition are striking pieces such as Liu Xiaodong’s paintings created on site, of which is the portrait of the Ministry of Culture’s family representing three generations, a heretofore-unprecedented depiction. of a local family by a foreign artist. The provocative duo Sun Yuan and Peng Yu have installed an 8 meter high and 12 meter large steel tank weighing 40 tons in the middle of a white cube gallery space. At high pressure, a hose violently sprays the tank, announcing Freedom with vigor. Upon the invitation and commission to create nearly 600 clay sculptures, the 65-year-old peasant artist Hu Zhijun makes his debut in this exhibition, elucidating famous contemporary Chinese artworks and events, the installation together making up a terrace-field of sand filled with clay sculptures. Celebrate expatriate artist Huang Yong Ping’s six-ton giant “sea monster” Wu Zei is featured in the central circular 22-meter gallery hovering above ground. The curator hopes to provide visitors with a powerful and immersive experience, and through a shared appreciation of art, establish a stronger relationship between Qatar and China.
Luciana Garbarni
What About the Art? Contemporary Art from China curated by Cai Guo-Qiang runs until 16 July, 2016 at Qatar Museums Gallery Al Riwaq, Doha, Qatar
Image credits in order of appearance
-Hu Xiangqian, Xiangqian Art Museum, 2010. Stills from performance in Beijing. Courtesy Hu Xiangqian -Cai-Guo-Qiang, Sky Ladder, 2015
- Huang Yong Ping, Wu Zei. Installation view at the Musée Océanographique de Monaco, 2010. © ADAGP Huang Yong Ping. Photo. André Morin. Courtesy the artist and kamel mennour, Paris
