{"id":481844,"date":"2026-05-13T02:22:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T02:22:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/481844\/"},"modified":"2026-05-13T02:22:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T02:22:10","slug":"cai-guo-qiang-joins-white-cube-the-art-newspaper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/481844\/","title":{"rendered":"Cai Guo-Qiang joins White Cube – The Art Newspaper"},"content":{"rendered":"

White Cube now represents Cai Guo-Qiang, making the British powerhouse the first gallery to represent the artist. The Chinese-born, New York-based painter is widely recognised for his gunpowder paintings. He had a solo show at the gallery\u2019s Bermondsey space last autumn, Gunpowder and Abstraction 2015-2016<\/a>, which was his first presentation in London since his large-scale project at Tate Modern in 2003.<\/p>\n

Cai\u2019s new arrangement with White Cube coincides with the gallery\u2019s solo presentation of the artist\u2019s ongoing gunpowder painting series with birds, which he started in 2018, at Tefaf New York (14-19 May). \u201cOver the past three decades, Cai has consistently redefined what art can be,\u201d Capucine Perrot, the gallery\u2019s director of artist and museum liaisons, tells The Art Newspaper. She adds that Cai has been on the gallery\u2019s radar since its team visited his studio in Beijing two decades ago.<\/p>\n

For Cai, the decision to team up with White Cube felt like a \u201cnatural progression\u201d and came from a desire to show his work in a commercial gallery. \u201cMy friends often reminded me that I should let these paintings be seen in a gallery setting,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Cai first experimented with gunpowder in 1984 at his Quanzhou studio. While living in Japan, he expanded his relationship with the material to outdoor explosion performances, which included the controlled firework blast on London\u2019s Millennium Bridge for his Tate commission and special displays for the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing.<\/p>\n

For its Tefaf presentation, White Cube will show a selection of Cai\u2019s splashy avian paintings, which are heavy on azure tones, as well as studies for paintings he showed at the Gallerie degli Uffizi in 2018 and others created for a 2020 project at the Palace Museum in Beijing. Cai says his interest in blue, after three decades of painting primarily in charred black, came from a search for \u201ca spiritual colour\u201d. But, he says, the material\u2019s rapid transformation in tone presents formal and logistical challenges. The subject of birds, meanwhile, was inspired by the current social landscape dominated by \u201cchaos, contradiction and conflict\u201d; the works\u2019 imagery of flocks \u201ccarries with it a certain unease and turbulence of our time\u201d, Cai says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"White Cube now represents Cai Guo-Qiang, making the British powerhouse the first gallery to represent the artist. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":481845,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[267],"tags":[365,362,363,364,53725,366,18,117,210748,19,17,210749,35511],"class_list":["post-481844","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-artsdesign","tag-cai-guo-qiang","tag-design","tag-eire","tag-entertainment","tag-frieze-new-york-2026","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-tefaf-new-york","tag-white-cube"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116564888473945268","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481844","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=481844"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481844\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/481845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=481844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=481844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=481844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}