inspiring: Cai Guo-Qiang

last summer, i went to the MOCA in LA and saw the amazing exhibition, Sky Ladder, of the work of Cai Guo-Qiang.

i was not lucky enough to go to the creation of the gunpowder drawing (which was HUGE), but here's an amazing video of the process, creation and detonation of the work.

Gunpowder Drawings for MOCA from MOCA on Vimeo.

there were a lot of alien elements: UFO's, large-eyed creatures, a recreation of the "i want to believe" poster from the x-files, etc. in the piece. the scale and the fact that it read almost like a timeline made a big impact on the way you viewed the work.

he also made these trippy crop-circles that were hung from the ceiling, as if the viewer was the alien (again, a stolen photo, since they did not allow photos in the gallery.)

and this giant alien on the side of the building:

here's a little behind-the-scenes of the creation of the alien:

the exhibition also had a large video component, where they showed large-formatted streams of his environmental-based firework displays. each is so temporal, so ephemeral, yet requires so much preparation not only with local governments, but to execute fireworks that are timed perfectly and to ensure no one is hurt. it's truly inspiring, and rather reminds me of Christo and Jean-Claude and the years (and sometimes decades)of planning they did for each of their works, even though the works themselves were only up for a short period of time. in short, i aspire to approach my own work with such discipline.

still from Black Ceremony over Qatar. watch the video, here.

watch more of Cai Guo-Qiang's work at his vimeo page, here.