Tonight is the launch party for the Cai Guo-Qiang retrospective at the Guggenheim, which runs through May 28. Sofie and I marked the Chinese New Year at a party in Cai Guo-Qiang’s studio the other week, where I spied this scale model showing his plans for the Guggenheim installation of Inopportune: Stage One. The work depicts a car bombing and features nine Chevrolet cars, six of which are seen flying through the air. There’s a nice video explaining more on the Guggenheim website. The video below shows another well known Cai Guo-Qiang work when it was on display at the Guggenheim’s sister museum in Berlin.

P.S. Cai Guo-Qiang, who is renowned for using gunpowder in many of his works, is in charge of the special effects for the Beijing Olympics, so expect to hear a lot more about him in the coming year.

Related:
The Pyrotechnic Imagination (New York Times Magazine)
Gunpowder Plots (The New Yorker)
Cai Guo-Qiang : I Want to Believe (Guggenheim Museum)