Cai Guo-Qiang in "Power" - Season 3 - "Art in the Twenty-First Century" | Art21

CAI GUO-QIANG in

In the twenty-first century

My work is sometimes like the poppy flower

It has this almost romantic side

But yet, it also represents a poison

Gun powder

From its very essence, you can see

so much of the power of the universe
how we came to be.

You can express these grand ideas
about the cosmos

Very epic and heroic,

but at the same time
it's used for such destruction.

Gun powder possesses a physical danger
for anyone who is near it.

But with time,
you get to know the material.

First you have to accept
that it's uncontrollable.

And then, work with it.

I've worked with the material so long,

that I've gained an understanding
of how it works

My way of doing it
is just to flow with the material.

To let it take me where it wants me to go.

So I continuously want it to
give me problems.

Give me obstacles to overcome.

This whole process of making drawing
is very much like lovemaking.

From the very beginning of
laying down the paper,

it's like laying down
the sheets on the bed.

And it's a very long process.

Always working towards a final goal.

And all the time there's this feeling
that you just want it to explode.

to finish.

But you're afraid
that maybe it's too early,

maybe it's not the best time yet,

maybe you need to work on it
a little more.

And then afterwards,
you either have great satisfaction

or you have disappointment as to
your entire performance.

You can talk all day about the ancient
philosophies and modern philosophies

art history, criticism, theory,
subject matter, historical context,

contemporary, post-modernism, form,
representation.

All these things can be discussed

but in the end,

it's really this on sight performance,
so to speak,

that really makes a work.

What I'm using here is a sort of
fold out sketchbook

It's not so much a scrawl,
but traditionally it's

always been used for people
to record their thoughts.

Almost as in a journal,
or a diary format.

In Chinese,

we actually say:
''Reading a painting''

Reading a picture

Because it's actually page by page,
section by section

That you're reading this.

Not just looking at it.

These 'folder books' are very similar in
this aspect to the scrawls.

The longhand scrawls are very traditional,
in Chinese painting.

Here I like to show you what my father has
painted on silk.

A very long scrawl.

Sometimes I see my explosion projects
almost like these scrawls.

Ones you open it,

it opens up the universe, in that it
seems boundless.

As the explosion project unfolds,
it's like opening the scrawl.

But then it disappears.

And yet, it's pregnant with all kinds
of possibilities.

What really influenced me the most,
are these very tiny matchbox paintings

that my father used to make.

He would paint these small landscape
paintings with his ink pen.

I saved some of these from that time.

When I was little and I would ask what
he was painting.

He might point at one of them
and would say:

''Ow, this is the sea of our hometown.''

But then I would go back with him to
our home village

and it was nothing like that.

From very early on I understood from
these that art is not about what you say

It's about these other things
that you don't say.

I wouldn't say that the entire exhibition
at MASS MoCA is

like a long scrawls unfolding.

It links to my past.

And it's linked to my culture as well.

When I first saw the exhibition space

I felt that it was like a section of road

A very wide road,
that has been transported here.

Further extending the idea of this path,
or journey

Is very much like taking a walk
along this path.

In the main gallery,

as the first car takes of

tumbling through the air in a very
dreamlike fashion

it lands safely back on it's four
wheels.

Undamaged

Unharmed

Is it just the repetition, it goes
right back to the very first car again.

The video in Times Square
also borrows the image of the car bomb.

This continues cycle suggest that
something might or

might not have happened.

This illusion that we're seeing in front
of us

Ever since September 11

The idea of terrorism is ever so present.

Always on our minds

This work

obviously has some direct reference
to these conditions that we live in now.