The Clouds Museumed by the Sky --Some reflections on Cai Guo-qiang's pyrotechnic art If you wish-- I'll rage on raw meat like a vandal Or change into hues that the sunrise arouses, If you wish-- I can be irreproachably gentle, Not a man--but a cloud in trousers. --Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893-1930), Andrey Kneller trans., "A Cloud in Trousers" He is a cloud creator. Those clouds, generated by sulphureous violence, are his genic pigments, his seminal hues. Exploded in the air, filamentous, dendroidly branched on the sky; or ejected onto the paper, smeared on the clothe; or etched into the panel, burned in the wall; or mirrored by water, reflected on retina; or on things beyond your imagination, the tones of his clouds modulate from thick black, dark gray to paler tones. Then blown by the wind like drops of condensed ink dispersing in clear water, his clouds perfectly simulate Chinese ink painting's six nuances: dry or wet, concentrated or diluted, and black or white. When his clouds fall on the paper, under better control, he can simply command and maneuver them to create various Chinese calligraphic effects, such as "drying brush stroke," "flying white stroke," "broken ink," or "splattered ink". And indeed, beneath the flamboyant arabesque, the sinuous burning tracks manifest his painting's spiritual "dragon arteries," which is the essence in the composition of Chinese landscape painting. The more you are familiar with the visual art tradition of China, the more you enjoy his innovations. He is too clever. Sometimes he even makes me feel he is cheating. In most avant-garde fashion, he rejuvenates the most traditional Chinese elements, he gives them breath, gives them the vigor to devour any artistic presumption. The cultural capitals accumulated by China over the last five thousand years are freely squandered by him in front of the innocent Western audiences, who may not know anything about the history but simply appreciate how extravagant his clouds are. However, at the same time, he invests each penny of the old money prudently, and he is always rewarded by the mint meanings, extracted from both Eastern and Western culture. Whatever, he is a cloud exquisite. And his clouds can only be museumed by the sky. -- http://blog.roodo.com/kamadevas http://www.wretch.cc/blog/kamadevas\ --

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