Ready to explode
From one lone fingerless glove to 11 pounds of gunpowder: Cai's Odyssey innumbers
Volunteers work in batches.Photo by Douglas Newman
Cai utilizes one calligraphy brush.Photo by Douglas Newman
A total of 42 panels will line the gallery.Photo by Douglas Newman
Only Cai Guo-Qiang himself will ignite the drawings.Photo by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders
The gunpowder drawings of artist Cai Guo-Qiang are characteristic for their subtly, as they draw inspiration from ancient Chinese literati paintings and traditional, naturalistic imagery. However, the facts surrounding Cai and his method make for interesting fodder; for example, Cai uses a single fingerless glove for applying gunpowder with his palm.
A bit more trivia: Joining his crew will be his wife, Hong Hong Wu, who recently joined Cai on a trip to Rome to visit their daughter, who is studying abroad in Italy during her junior year at Rhode Island School of Design. It's all leading up to Wednesday night's ignition in a Houston warehouse that will produce Cai's landmark artwork Odyssey for the walls of the Chinese gallery at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
Creating epic gunpowder drawings is far from a Roman holiday. For a recent project in Taipei, Cai's assistants were working until 1 a.m. to prepare for the next day's tasks. The Houston volunteers will be put to work as well, cutting stencils, stripping fuses and distributing gunpowder into smaller containers for Cai to hold and spread freely.
The effort's greatest opponent is humidity. If the studio has too much moisture, the paper or the gunpowder become damp, and therefore the drawing is harder to ignite successfully.
To break down his work, read on for a countdown from 100 to one of the facts and figures behind Cai's Houston encounter:
- 107: number of volunteers
- 60: pairs of scissors and utility knives
- 51: length (in meters) of Odyssey, the longest drawing Cai has created
- 42: number of panels that will line the MFAH's Chinese art gallery
- 30: number of volunteers required at the time of detonation
- 18: minimum age limit of volunteers
- 20: disposable plastic bowls for Cai to mix gunpowder
- 11: time of morning break for volunteers and Cai's crew
- 5: kg. (11 lb.) of gunpowder used to create the drawing. Also, five fire extinguishers will be on hand in the warehouse studio.
- 4: boxes of masking tape used to affix butcher paper to the warehouse floor
- 2: number of times acid-free glassine paper must wrap around the 42 panels
- 1: small plastic broom, bottle of sumi ink and calligraphy brush for signing the drawing. Odyssey also represents the first time that a work by Cai will entirely cover the walls of a gallery, and it his first commission for a museum's Asian art department.
Editor's note: If you don't have one of the few coveted tickets to watch Cai's gunpowder art explode in person at the warehouse (and they are all sold out), you can watch a livestream of it on CultureMap.com.
There will also be an off-site viewing party held at Saint Arnold Brewing Company from 6-8 p.m. Wednesday. The first 100 people will be admitted free, courtesy of MFAH. After that, admission is $7.
