• Home
  • popular
  • EVENTS
  • submit-new-event
  • CHARITY GUIDE
  • Children
  • Education
  • Health
  • Veterans
  • Social Services
  • Arts + Culture
  • Animals
  • LGBTQ
  • New Charity
  • TRENDING NEWS
  • News
  • City Life
  • Entertainment
  • Sports
  • Home + Design
  • Travel
  • Real Estate
  • Restaurants + Bars
  • Arts
  • Society
  • Innovation
  • Fashion + Beauty
  • subscribe
  • about
  • series
  • Embracing Your Inner Cowboy
  • Green Living
  • Summer Fun
  • Real Estate Confidential
  • RX In the City
  • State of the Arts
  • Fall For Fashion
  • Cai's Odyssey
  • Comforts of Home
  • Good Eats
  • Holiday Gift Guide 2010
  • Holiday Gift Guide 2
  • Good Eats 2
  • HMNS Pirates
  • The Future of Houston
  • We Heart Hou 2
  • Music Inspires
  • True Grit
  • Hoops City
  • Green Living 2011
  • Cruizin for a Cure
  • Summer Fun 2011
  • Just Beat It
  • Real Estate 2011
  • Shelby on the Seine
  • Rx in the City 2011
  • Entrepreneur Video Series
  • Going Wild Zoo
  • State of the Arts 2011
  • Fall for Fashion 2011
  • Elaine Turner 2011
  • Comforts of Home 2011
  • King Tut
  • Chevy Girls
  • Good Eats 2011
  • Ready to Jingle
  • Houston at 175
  • The Love Month
  • Clifford on The Catwalk Htx
  • Let's Go Rodeo 2012
  • King's Harbor
  • FotoFest 2012
  • City Centre
  • Hidden Houston
  • Green Living 2012
  • Summer Fun 2012
  • Bookmark
  • 1987: The year that changed Houston
  • Best of Everything 2012
  • Real Estate 2012
  • Rx in the City 2012
  • Lost Pines Road Trip Houston
  • London Dreams
  • State of the Arts 2012
  • HTX Fall For Fashion 2012
  • HTX Good Eats 2012
  • HTX Contemporary Arts 2012
  • HCC 2012
  • Dine to Donate
  • Tasting Room
  • HTX Comforts of Home 2012
  • Charming Charlie
  • Asia Society
  • HTX Ready to Jingle 2012
  • HTX Mistletoe on the go
  • HTX Sun and Ski
  • HTX Cars in Lifestyle
  • HTX New Beginnings
  • HTX Wonderful Weddings
  • HTX Clifford on the Catwalk 2013
  • Zadok Sparkle into Spring
  • HTX Let's Go Rodeo 2013
  • HCC Passion for Fashion
  • BCAF 2013
  • HTX Best of 2013
  • HTX City Centre 2013
  • HTX Real Estate 2013
  • HTX France 2013
  • Driving in Style
  • HTX Island Time
  • HTX Super Season 2013
  • HTX Music Scene 2013
  • HTX Clifford on the Catwalk 2013 2
  • HTX Baker Institute
  • HTX Comforts of Home 2013
  • Mothers Day Gift Guide 2021 Houston
  • Staying Ahead of the Game
  • Wrangler Houston
  • First-time Homebuyers Guide Houston 2021
  • Visit Frisco Houston
  • promoted
  • eventdetail
  • Greystar Novel River Oaks
  • Thirdhome Go Houston
  • Dogfish Head Houston
  • LovBe Houston
  • Claire St Amant podcast Houston
  • The Listing Firm Houston
  • South Padre Houston
  • NextGen Real Estate Houston
  • Pioneer Houston
  • Collaborative for Children
  • Decorum
  • Bold Rock Cider
  • Nasher Houston
  • Houston Tastemaker Awards 2021
  • CityNorth
  • Urban Office
  • Villa Cotton
  • Luck Springs Houston
  • EightyTwo
  • Rectanglo.com
  • Silver Eagle Karbach
  • Mirador Group
  • Nirmanz
  • Bandera Houston
  • Milan Laser
  • Lafayette Travel
  • Highland Park Village Houston
  • Proximo Spirits
  • Douglas Elliman Harris Benson
  • Original ChopShop
  • Bordeaux Houston
  • Strike Marketing
  • Rice Village Gift Guide 2021
  • Downtown District
  • Broadstone Memorial Park
  • Gift Guide
  • Music Lane
  • Blue Circle Foods
  • Houston Tastemaker Awards 2022
  • True Rest
  • Lone Star Sports
  • Silver Eagle Hard Soda
  • Modelo recipes
  • Modelo Fighting Spirit
  • Athletic Brewing
  • Rodeo Houston
  • Silver Eagle Bud Light Next
  • Waco CVB
  • EnerGenie
  • HLSR Wine Committee
  • All Hands
  • El Paso
  • Avenida Houston
  • Visit Lubbock Houston
  • JW Marriott San Antonio
  • Silver Eagle Tupps
  • Space Center Houston
  • Central Market Houston
  • Boulevard Realty
  • Travel Texas Houston
  • Alliantgroup
  • Golf Live
  • DC Partners
  • Under the Influencer
  • Blossom Hotel
  • San Marcos Houston
  • Photo Essay: Holiday Gift Guide 2009
  • We Heart Hou
  • Walker House
  • HTX Good Eats 2013
  • HTX Ready to Jingle 2013
  • HTX Culture Motive
  • HTX Auto Awards
  • HTX Ski Magic
  • HTX Wonderful Weddings 2014
  • HTX Texas Traveler
  • HTX Cifford on the Catwalk 2014
  • HTX United Way 2014
  • HTX Up to Speed
  • HTX Rodeo 2014
  • HTX City Centre 2014
  • HTX Dos Equis
  • HTX Tastemakers 2014
  • HTX Reliant
  • HTX Houston Symphony
  • HTX Trailblazers
  • HTX_RealEstateConfidential_2014
  • HTX_IW_Marks_FashionSeries
  • HTX_Green_Street
  • Dating 101
  • HTX_Clifford_on_the_Catwalk_2014
  • FIVE CultureMap 5th Birthday Bash
  • HTX Clifford on the Catwalk 2014 TEST
  • HTX Texans
  • Bergner and Johnson
  • HTX Good Eats 2014
  • United Way 2014-15_Single Promoted Articles
  • Holiday Pop Up Shop Houston
  • Where to Eat Houston
  • Copious Row Single Promoted Articles
  • HTX Ready to Jingle 2014
  • htx woodford reserve manhattans
  • Zadok Swiss Watches
  • HTX Wonderful Weddings 2015
  • HTX Charity Challenge 2015
  • United Way Helpline Promoted Article
  • Boulevard Realty
  • Fusion Academy Promoted Article
  • Clifford on the Catwalk Fall 2015
  • United Way Book Power Promoted Article
  • Jameson HTX
  • Primavera 2015
  • Promenade Place
  • Hotel Galvez
  • Tremont House
  • HTX Tastemakers 2015
  • HTX Digital Graffiti/Alys Beach
  • MD Anderson Breast Cancer Promoted Article
  • HTX RealEstateConfidential 2015
  • HTX Vargos on the Lake
  • Omni Hotel HTX
  • Undies for Everyone
  • Reliant Bright Ideas Houston
  • 2015 Houston Stylemaker
  • HTX Renewable You
  • Urban Flats Builder
  • Urban Flats Builder
  • HTX New York Fashion Week spring 2016
  • Kyrie Massage
  • Red Bull Flying Bach
  • Hotze Health and Wellness
  • ReadFest 2015
  • Alzheimer's Promoted Article
  • Formula 1 Giveaway
  • Professional Skin Treatments by NuMe Express

    The Odyssey Takes a Swerve

    Cai change: Inspired by Houston, gunpowder artist alters his explosive plans toinclude happy plants

    Steven Devadanam
    Oct 5, 2010 | 5:59 pm
    • Volunteers whisk Cai's stencils across the warehouse.
      Photo by Everett Taasevigen
    • Cai distributes gunpowder to test different effects on Monday morning.
      Photo by Everett Taasevigen
    • Although he originally was transferring his composition from a scroll, Cai'slayout for "Odyssey" has evolved.
      Photo by Everett Taasevigen
    • Cai reports that he's impressed with the volunteers' enthusiasm.
      Photo by Everett Taasevigen

    The artist's process is not always fluid: artworks acquire different layers, new media is introduced, and compositions become altered. Such is the case with Cai Guo-Qiang's Odyssey, which underwent a rupture in format on Monday that rivals Wednesday's anticipated explosion in dramatic effect.

    Significantly, Cai's changes have been informed not merely by artistic whims, but his experience during his short time in Houston. Inspired by viewing of Chinese paintings at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, where he also browsed through an album of flowers, Cai has drawn a new section on the 51-meter paper, adding lotus, peonies and a scholar's rock.

    "It's completely new from the original plans," explains MFAH curator of Asian art, Christine Starkman. "It's a motif that he loves, these flowers. Scholarly painters love that motif too, so he was happy that he was able to bring it in. But he also loves the simple visual effect."

    Starkman translated that Cai intends to imbue the future Arts of China gallery with a "sense of happiness" through the new symbols. Traditionally, the lotus represents the ethereal and immortality, while the peony connotes high taste, ephemerality and intellectualism. The new imagery has taken the former place of mountains and clouds, which still remain prominent aspects of other panels.

    Adding to the impromptu change in composition was the artist's request for actual plant matter to be brought to the warehouse studio. MFAH associate director Willard Holmes volunteered to fetch bamboo and wisteria from the museum's own Cullen Sculpture Garden and harvested the botanical finds himself.

    "I went to my house and cut some honeysuckle because I didn't know how big of a vine he wanted," Holmes tells CultureMap with a chuckle.

    The bamboo and wisteria will be incorporated over the gallery's arched entryways. Holmes elaborates, "He's going to press the plants onto the paper and then put gunpowder around them, so that whatever is burned will include a combination of both the hand-cut plants and the impression that they'll leave." Holmes also brought dried leaves, as per Cai's request, which will burn with the gunpowder.

    "It's full of foliage, it's going to be beautiful," Starkman says of the new media.

    Cai has begun to incorporate different forms of paper in the stencils, notably glassine and Japanese tissue paper. Each material will imbue Odyssey with its own effects; the thin tissue paper will create the look of a soft paintbrush, giving the flowers a cloudy quality, while the glassine's burning will result in more severe lines.

    With Wednesday's 6 p.m. explosion event approaching, Starkman was in negotiations with the fire marshal about how close the explosion can take place in relation to the audience bleachers, as the crew prepared to lay out the 42 fiberboard panels for the first time. Cai is already envisioning the aftermath of Wednesday's ignition, and has suggested to Starkman that they conduct a tea ceremony in the Arts of China gallery on Friday, before the museum's Chinese antiquities are reinstalled.

    "We will be with only a few key museum figures," Starkman says. "It's our first and last time to experience Cai's work in its most pure state."

     

     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 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 guests will be admitted free, courtesy of MFAH. After that, admission is $7.

    unspecifiedseries568663978
    series/cais-odyssey
    news/entertainment

    most read posts

    Houston is one of America's most overpriced cities, study finds

    This Houston suburb had the highest apartment rent prices in June

    Netflix chef's modern Mexican restaurant opens in Houston this month

    Opens to the Public Today

    Tracing the Odyssey of Cai Guo-Qiang in pictures

    Everett Taasevigen
    Everett Taasevigen
    Oct 17, 2010 | 1:03 am
    Tracing the Odyssey of Cai Guo-Qiang in pictures
    Photo by Everett Taasevigen

    Photographer Everett Taasevigen chronicled the odyssey of gunpower artist Cai Guo-Qiang from start to finish. Here's what he saw.

    The week started for Cai with a trip to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston to take in some inspiration from the private collection of early and modern Chinese paintings and scrolls currently on loan to the museum.

    News_Cai Guo-Qian_slideshow_1
      
    Photo by Everett Taasevigen
    The week started for Cai with a trip to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston to take in some inspiration from the private collection of early and modern Chinese paintings and scrolls currently on loan to the museum.
    In you weren't among the fortunate spectators who saw the Cai Guo-Qiang gunpowder drawing explosion live or livestreamed [https: /www.culturemap.com/series/cais-odyssey/] on CultureMap — of if you were there and you blinked (it was over in about two seconds) — here’s my recap, in photos, of the days building up to and the night of the ignition of Odyssey.
    unspecified
    series/cais-odyssey
    news/entertainment
    Loading...