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AN ARTIST’S EXPANSIVE VISION TAKES A VIEW OF THE UNIVERSE AS ITS STARTING POINT

by Edward M. Gómez

Mother always said, “Don’t play with matches!” and, similarly, “Don't play with fire!”

Mother never met the Chinese-born artist Cai Guo-Qiang, whose long career has been marked by his use of fire and gunpowder to create physical works of art and spectacular events whose themes have alluded to such subjects as the universe, the unseen or spiritual world, and the forces of nature. Last year, the National Art Center, Tokyo, presented Ramble in the Cosmos, from Primeval Fireball Onward, a career-spanning retrospective of Cai’s work that included some of his newest creations. The exhibition ran from June 29 through August 21, 2023.

The exhibition’s own thematic starting point was Primeval Fireball: The Project for Projects, an exhibition Cai presented in Japan back in 1991. In it, he showed several large-scale, abstract drawings he had made with gunpowder on paper and then mounted on wood to create multi-panel, free-standing folding screens. Those works bore such titles as “Fetus Movement II: Project for Extraterrestrials No. 9” and “Reviving the Ancient Signal Towers: Project for Extraterrestrials No. 8.”

In conjunction with last year’s big exhibition at the National Art Center, Tokyo, Cai, who was born in Quanzhou, in China’s Fujian Province, and studied stage design at the Shanghai Theater Academy in the early 1980s, stated, “During my ‘Primeval Fireball’ era, I passionately contemplated the human and global issues of the twentieth century, such as materialism, the degradation of human nature, environmental destruction, and the future of the cosmos. I pondered over these issues as if I were an extraterrestrial. Reality often felt constraining, but the stars in the sky were always like guiding lights, illuminating my ‘ramble in the cosmos.’”

In 1986, Cai left China and moved to Japan, where he stayed until 1995. Later, he moved to New York and in 2011 bought a former horse farm in New Jersey, whose buildings he renovated in collaboration with the architect Frank Gehry, creating a home for himself and his family, a large studio, and facilities for his archives and for mounting exhibitions.

Last summer’s presentation in the cavernous spaces of the National Art Center, Tokyo, included a recreation of Cai’s Primeval Fireball screen works in the form of a super-long, multi-panel painting that covered the back wall of the main exhibition room. The big show also featured “Encounter with the Unknown,” the artist’s newest, large-scale mixed-media creation, a kinetic installation piece consisting of numerous free-standing or hanging-from-the ceiling, wiry structures covered with and visually animated by countless LED lights.

In his published comments regarding his big Tokyo blow-out, Cai noted, “Now, while humanity is emerging from the shadow of the pandemic,” it is “still mired in social dilemmas of economic decline, global regression, and cultural conflicts on Earth. Contemporary art, which once led with its avant-garde spirit of human creativity, is also diminishing. At this moment, revisiting the spirit of ‘Primeval Fireball’ from thirty years ago is a reunion with my former self, and a return to the embrace of the universe — the eternal homeland of the young artist. Viewing Earth’s civilization with the eyes of the universe also holds special significance in responding to the societal challenges we face today. "

[Scroll down to see more of Cai Guo-Qiang’s artworks from the exhibition Ramble in the Cosmos, from Primeval Fireball Onward, a career-spanning retrospective that was presented at the National Art Center, Tokyo, from June 29 through August 21, 2023.]