Installment #31 in Monolisticle's Ongoing Campaign Against the "Internet of Endless Listicles."
Consisting of a mixture of sulfur, charcoal, and potassium nitrate, gunpowder is the earliest known chemical explosive.
Gunpowder has been used in firearms, artillery, rocketry, pyrotechnics, and most recently—in the genius creative hands of Cai Guo-Qiang—art. Spectacular, mesmerizing, gunpowder art.
Art, with an element of danger. Art, that’s excitingly unpredictable.
With Guo-Qiang’s performances, you always get the feeling that something could go wrong at any moment—a terrible accident, or a misfire, or simply fizzling out like a dud firecracker (it is, after all, gunpowder).
What makes his art so popular is its inherent excitement, and accessibility. This is not the type of high-concept art that leaves the average person scratching his or her head or rolling his or her eyes. When the smoke clears, his gunpowder "drawings" (ignited in a controlled manner to make traceries on surfaces) actually resemble shapes and forms that people can recognize: An alligator. A horse. A raptor.
And other times, not so recognizable. But regardless of whether it "looks like anything," his work is always astonishing. Even at its most abstract.
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Of late, he has taken his "explosions" to the masses via live performances. In their simplest description, one might call them "daytime fireworks." But that wouldn’t give them the full credit they deserve. They are nothing less than artistic wonders. Artfully choreographed explosions of color. Pyrotechnic masterpieces.
Most recently, he partnered with Hennessy to produce a daytime spectacle above the Charente River in Cognac, France, launching 20,000 fireworks from barrels floating in the river. (If you’re like me, your first thought is: what effect do those fireworks have on the surrounding ecosystem? Both Guo-Qiang and Hennessy make an effort to point out that the fireworks are made of non-toxic, eco-conscious CE-certified pyrotechnic material).
The performance, titled “The Birth of Tragedy,” is Guo-Qiang at his most ambitious, and also perhaps, his finest. Vivid explosions of color shoot up into the sky in a succession of bursts. Some rise like streaming roman candles. Others reach their peak, then burst again. As they dolly in the breeze and begin to dissipate, fresh new colors burst amid the lingering white smoke. In some instances, the explosions resemble a twisted bouquet of intertwined flowers. Or the outstretched spines of sea urchins. Or coral.
But not all of Guo-Qiang’s artworks use gunpowder. Yet even the gunpowderless ones possess an explosive energy. His installation piece titled “Head On,” for example, is every bit as spectacular. It consists of a long pack of 99 life-like wolves that seem to leap into the air in a unified trajectory, only to seemingly “crash” into a glass wall at the far end of the room and fall to the floor, stunned by the simulated impact.
“Head On” is one of those art pieces you want to look at from every angle. To view it from a distance, walk around it, and get up-close enough to inspect the realism of the wolves. Their fur. Their eyes. Their teeth. The piece is terrifying, but also dazzling. And “terrifying, but also dazzling” pretty much encapsulates everything Guo-Qiang does. I can’t wait to see what new “terrifying, but also dazzling” thing he will do next.
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