Cai Guo-Qiang: Falling back to earth

174 175 1994 Reporting on a major solo exhibition at Tokyo’s Setagaya Art Museum and Art Tower Mito, the Daily Yomiuri newspaper describes Cai as a standard bearer for Asian art in Japan, and declares the ‘decline of Euro–American contemporary art’. 1989 Cai and Hong Hong’s first daughter, Wen-You Cai, is born. The artist attends Tsukuba University as a research student, working under conceptual artist Tatsuo Kawaguchi. He develops an interest in astrophysics. He begins his ‘Projects for Extraterrestrials’ series with an explosion event, titled Human Abode , in suburban Tokyo. 1990 The Osaka Contemporary Art Center presents Cai’s solo project ‘Works 1988/89’. He also travels to France to make the first presentation of his work in the West, as part of the group exhibition ‘Chine demain pour hier’ (China tomorrow for yesterday) in Pourrières, Aix-en-Provence. 1991 In February, Cai holds an exhibition titled ‘Primeval Fireball’ in Tokyo’s P3 art and environment gallery. It is his most important exhibition in Japan; he showed gunpowder on paper mounted panels from the ‘Projects for Extraterrestrials’ series. It creates an enormous reaction within the art scene in Japan. 1992 With a busy production schedule in Japan, Cai travels to Germany to realise his site-specific Fetus Movement II: Project for Extraterrestrials No.9 — the first and only time he places himself in the area of an explosion. 1993 Tokyo’s P3 art and environment gallery commissions the monumental Project to Extend the Great Wall of China by 10,000 Meters: Project for Extraterrestrials No.10 , to be undertaken in the Gobi Desert. In order to offset costs, Cai works with a travel agency to organise a group of Japanese tourists who pay to attend the event and are mobilised to help lay fuse lines for the artwork. Cai later relocates to Iwaki in Fukushima Prefecture and creates a major installation, Chrysanthemum Tea , for the local museum. 1995 After a major work in Johannesburg and the social project Bringing to Venice What Marco Polo Forgot at the Venice Biennale, Cai receives a grant from the Asian Cultural Council to undertake a year- long residency in New York, where he continues to maintain a studio to this day. Before he leaves for the United States, he participates in the inaugural exhibition of Tokyo’s new Museum of Contemporary Art as a Japanese artist. 1996 Cai realises his work The Century with Mushroom Clouds: Project for the 20th Century , photographing a series of small explosions in New York, at nuclear testing sites, and with famous works of Land art in Nevada and Utah. For ‘The Second Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art’ (APT2) at the Queensland Art Gallery, Cai proposes the explosion event Dragon or Rainbow Serpent: A Myth Glorified or Feared: Project for Extraterrestrials No.28 . However, an accident at a local pyrotechnic company leaves the project unrealised, making evident the unpredictability of such projects. In addition, with the help of Gallery staff, Cai creates a large gunpowder drawing in the car park of the Queensland Performing Arts Centre. As a consequence of the accident, he cancels his plans to burn a fire engine for his next project in Japan. Cai Guo-Qiang checking one of the panels of Nine Dragon Wall (Drawing for Dragon or Rainbow Serpent: A Myth Glorified or Feared: Project for Extraterrestrials No.28) 1996 / Queensland Performing Arts Centre car park, 20 September 1996 / Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Research Library Bringing to Venice What Marco Polo Forgot , realised at the 46th Venice Biennale, Italy, 1995 / Photograph: Yamamoto Tadasu / Courtesy: Cai Studio Below Primeval Fireball: The Project for Projects 1991 Installation view, P3 art and environment, Tokyo, Japan, 1991 Seven gunpowder drawings (gunpowder on paper, mounted on board as folding screens) Photograph: Yoshihiro Hagiwara Courtesy: Cai Studio Preparation and realisation of Project to Extend the Great Wall of China by 10,000 Meters: Project for Extraterrestrials No.10 , realised in the Gobi Desert, China, 27 February 1993 / Commissioned by P3 art and environment, Tokyo / Photographs: Masanobu Moriyama / Courtesy: Cai Studio The Century with Mushroom Clouds: Project for the 20th Century , realised in part at Nuclear Test Site, Nevada, 13 February 1996 Photograph: Hiro Ihara / Courtesy: Cai Studio Press coverage from the Courier-Mail (Brisbane), 26 September 1996. ‘Explosion destroys Triennial fireworks’ Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Research Library 1997 Cai’s status as a major figure in international contemporary art is confirmed as he participates in the Venice and Istanbul Biennales, and holds solo exhibitions in museums in Denmark and the United States. He also participates in the important international travelling exhibition ‘Cities on the Move’, curated by Hou Hanru and Hans Ulrich Obrist.