I WANT TO BELIEVE
The Century with Mushroom Clouds: Project for the 20th Century, 1996. Realized at various sites in the United States, February–April 1996, 1 second each explosion. Gunpowder (10 g each) and cardboard tubes. At Nevada Test Site, February 13, 1996. Photo: Hiro Ihara, courtesy Cai Studio
Installation process at the Guggenheim: On January 18, 2008, a team consisting of the artist Cai Guo-Qiang, members of his studio, full-time staff, and temporary installation crews of the Guggenheim Museum’s Curatorial, Art Services and Preparations, Registrar, Conservation, Fabrications, Construction, Multimedia, Lighting, and Exhibition Management departments began the month-long installation of Cai Guo-Qiang: I Want to Believe. The images here represent the technically challenging task of installing four of the exhibition’s works.
Cai Guo-Qiang has exploded the accepted parameters of art making in our time. In this particular installation, Cai positions 99 wolves around the museum which were fabricated form China made from paper-mache, plaster, resin and painted hide. The first wolves were hung from the ceiling in a unified arc stretching 140 feet in length. Cai Guo-Qiang's practice draws on a wide variety of symbols, narratives, traditions and materials such as fengshui, Chinese medicine, dragons, roller coasters, computers, vending machines, wildlife, portraiture, non-Han Chinese citizens and their cultures, fireworks and gunpowder. Much of his work draws on Maoist/Socialist concepts for content, especially his gunpowder drawings which strongly reflect Mao Zedong's tenet "destroy nothing, create nothing." (artists work explosive, YANG YINSHI, 2000)
