The Big Picture: Cai Guo Qiang at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum

Cai Guo Qiang, Head on, 2006, 99 life-sized replicas of wolves and glass wall. Wolves: gauze, resin, and painted hide, Dimensions variable. Deutsche Bank Collection, commissioned by Deutsche Bank AG. Installation view at Taipei Fine Arts Museum, 2009

By Alvaro Rodríguez-Fominaya

You cannot help feeling overwhelmed once you enter the lobby of Taipei Fine Arts Museum, an imposing 1980s modernist building reminiscent of the Smithsons. Cai Guo Qiang’s transformation of the museum space has brought large crowds of wandering visitors that replicate the shopping mall experience as a cultural subproduct of the 1990s. This complements the coherent exhibition title: “Hanging out in The Museum.” The insertion of daily life in museum semantics is visible in a very unsubtle but effective way. For his first large-scale show, after the Guggenheim retrospective, Cai Guo Qiang has developed three new major works, and at the same time he has included most of his well-known installations. These are brutal, unforgiving and poetic at the same time. The entrance of the museum is dominated by Inopportune: Stage One, which includes eight cars that describe a parabolic leap closer to a circus stunt. This creates an effect that overpowers the unsuspecting visitor, as much as his recent fireworks design for the sixtieth anniversary of the People’s Republic of China. Cultural Melting Bath, a work that was on show previously at Queens Museum, provides a chilly cultural experience, as visitors line up to immerse themselves in a whirlpool bath set up outside the museum.

The fact that Taiwan’s politics have recently shifted towards a more China-friendly stance has provided the necessary political framework for a show like this to happen. But no less meaningful in the logistics of this exhibition is financial support from the private sector. Collector support is the main reason why many exhibitions happen in Asia, and most art scenes have strong collector-supported art spaces.

Innoportune: Stage Two, Head On, and Reflection - A Gift from Iwaki takes center stage in the layout of the show. Innoportune: Stage Two draws on a traditional Chinese story in which a twelfth-century hero kills a series of man-eating tigers. Nine life-sized tiger replicas dominate the space in a theatrical and choreographed way, a display of visual resources similar to his other installations where the theatrical prevails. Head On is a most impressive reflection on futility and a beautiful exercise of new academicism; images of countless wolves hitting a glass wall linger painfully in our minds. The exhibition also includes a selection of his well-known, art-market-pleasing gun powder paintings, which together with his videos and video-installation documentation of firework performances stitch together the different galleries and the rhythm of the show.

(November 21, 2009 - February 21, 2010)

Alvaro Rodríguez-Fominaya is Executive Director/Curator at Para/Site Art Space (Hong Kong).

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